


Scorched Earth Policy

by aiIenzo



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Codependency, Depression, Fake AH Crew, Female Jack, M/M, Possessive Behavior, Raychael - Freeform, Rough Sex, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Relationships, good old fashioned violence, slaughter for funsies, unnecessary DC references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 14:10:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14262690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aiIenzo/pseuds/aiIenzo
Summary: And this shit -- the bodies strewn across the highway like they’d torn the windpipe from the city just to watch what came out -- it was too horrible of a thing to do alone, with only his debilitating thoughts to define him.Because... fuck.Ray’s not wrong. He’s not wrong about any of it. And as they slide back into the car together, with Ray’s serene smile etching out a place in the darkness where Michael doesn’t feel so god-fucking-awful, he can’t decide which tampered emotion that he’s so unintentionally tied to Ray has him feeling backed into a corner -- terror, or appreciation.





	Scorched Earth Policy

**Author's Note:**

> I've held this one close to my heart for a long, long time, determined to do better by it, but it's time for me to let go. Hope you enjoy my goodbye piece to raychael as much as I enjoyed creating it <3
> 
> Thank you to my beta Paintlopedia, who puts up with my insecurity and pre-posting panic.

Michael sees things differently. It’s a festering, offhand idiosyncrasy that worms its way through his daily delirium, faintly suggesting the idea that, just maybe, he’s trekked too far off the reservation. But it never creates enough of a hindrance to warrant change. It’s a simple comparison process that leaves no room for sympathies, hope, or that omnipresent “see the best in people” judgement that plagues the population outside his doorstep. He likes to convince himself it’s a survival strategy.

Everything is biological, and his existence, however unsatisfying, is of no more importance than that of the rat he just gunned down, scrambling his way over the rusted remains of a chain link fence in a valiant attempt to escape his debt to a card shark. There are leaders, and pawns; men who lie through their teeth, and the women who manipulate them; there are animals, some with four legs, some with two, scavenging for some semblance of what they believe the world should provide. The world that engulfs him battles for everything but decency.

He lives in the same fluid air as those around him, breathing, co-existing, but never mingling. Never able to compare himself to another dirty, tired bag of meat and blood that keeps a Glock in their glove compartment like others keep wadded up tissues and broken pens. He is his own entity, broken like the rest of them, but a social class higher, willing to make decisions where God will not.

Until he meets Ray.

He’s bleeding against the wood pallets of a nondescript warehouse, cursing both his employer and himself for not demanding the pay up front. There’s a bullet dug deep into his arm, an inch away from real trouble, and as much as he doesn’t necessarily enjoy living, he’d rather avoid giving any Ballas with his gun cocked to the side the satisfaction of knowing he’d taken out Jones.

His hands are sweaty as he adjusts his grip, counting shots until he can blow cover and take at least two of them out before they’ve reloaded.

“Fuck,” he curses, spitting out blood into the ground courtesy of his cracked jaw and lip, and steadies himself.

The Ballas start yelling. Gunfire turns from teasing to frantic, and the echo against the sheet metal walls is enough to drown out the undignified slump of bodies across the floor. Michael hovers, uncertain, never having moved. The shots falter, and silence ensues, magnifying the dripping of a leaking pipe to Michael’s left and winding up the clench of anxiety, deep in his gut. There’s a soft groan from somewhere, the muffled cry of crippling pain that promises a full white-out, and footsteps echo proudly across the floor. Defiant in all the ways Michael knows. Cocky. Careless, but with a skill set to back it up. The footsteps stop, a shot rings out, and the groaning is silenced.

A beat of fiery curiosity, and then --

“Jones?”

Michael shifts, his eyes narrowed. The speaker is only a few yards away, eleven o’clock from origin of the bullet, and standing proudly. Michael can easily take the shot blind, but his reservations hold his trigger finger. He’s used to people knowing him by name, and his reputation is flaunt with bouts of brazen antics that wind him up on Weazel news, showering pedestrians with a minigun while he burns their houses to the fucking ground -- but this is different. It’s assertive, but curious.

Plus, the dude took down five armed Ballas in fourteen seconds, and while Michael relishes in plummeting past the edge of foolhardy decisions, he’s not exactly liking his odds.

“Who do you represent?” he asks, because he _hates_ needless bullshit and catty lines to win people over, and every second that passes is another ounce of blood he won’t get back. The wood is cold against his cheek, and his legs hurt from being balled up on his feet for so long, but he remains still.

The man seems to share his enthusiasm for taking things straight to the throat, and answers immediately. “I work for Ramsey. He likes your particular skill set, and humbly requests a meeting.”

“Tell Ramsey to eat a dick,” he spits back, cradling his arm.

See, Michael knows Ramsey. The kingpin. The unanimous crime boss of Los Santos, dishonorably discharged and sunken so deep within the city that the blood that flows through his veins could only be compared to the stars that shine against high rise buildings, the sickening yellow of streetlamps, the meth stacked high in a station wagon on the outskirts of Blaine County, encompassing everything both he and this city have taken from the world.

And whatever Ramsey wants with him, it wouldn’t be good. Michael has talents, but Ramsey has good men. Incredible men. At best, Michael could be seen as a low-level threat.                                                                                                                                                              

“Alright. Your loss, asshole.”

Michael can hear the stranger turn his back on him -- his _back_ \-- and he instantly regrets his words. Turning down Ramsey could be worse than accepting his invite, but hell if he was going to go in blind. He tries to avoid the nagging reminder that he hasn’t had a decent conversation with another human being in three days, and he’s getting desperate for communication that doesn’t end in bloodshed.

He’s on his feet with his gun raised before the guy can even turn back around.

The stranger stops, his rifle thrown casually over his shoulder like he owns everything in the room, down to the concrete that’ll be stained red by the time the workers show up tomorrow. He isn’t afraid, and that in itself throws Michael for a fucking loop, because how _dare_ this guy traverse into his territory, armed to the teeth and showing as little remorse for clandestine intentions as Michael does.

How fucking _dare_ he.

“What does he want with me? Am I on his radar? Gonna pay me to get out of town?”

The guy turns, eyes darkened, irritated, and decidedly bored as he stares Michael down, oblivious to the barrel aimed straight for his torso. Michael takes him in, trying to get a read on how he should behave, looking for all the telltale signs he’s come to predict from criminals for hire.

It’s not what Michael expects. Ramsey’s boy is weary, donned in a royal purple hoodie that pairs with a beat up set of checkered Vans, a tangle of dark hair hidden underneath an indistinct black beanie. He looks wholly and completely done with Michael’s attitude, and that petulant, teenage superiority breaks through Michael’s wary concern with a sharp splinter of disbelief.

He snorts, gesturing to Ray’s appearance. “What, did Ramsey send the geek squad after me?”

Before Michael can even smirk at his own foolish joke, there’s a .45 aimed at him, and he’s too shocked to even brace himself for the trigger pull. He feels the air convulse around his legs, accompanying a silenced shot, and he waits for the pain of a gut wound to engulf him and send him spiraling. It never comes, and he looks down, his heart racing, to find the bullet lodged into the cement pillar behind him, shot directly between his legs.

He looks up, bewildered and slightly ashamed, but the stranger’s expression doesn’t change.

“My name is Ray Narvaez. Ramsey sent me because I’m the best fucking shot he knows, and you have a habit of putting yourself in situations where my kind of expertise comes in handy.” He puts his pistol away, the challenge for Michael to take a shot written unabashedly across his face. “Now if you’re done fucking around, I’d like to get home before you alert every cop within a twenty mile radius.”

He turns to leave again, and Michael lets him go, still feeling the tremors of nearly having his dick splattered across the floor. The split bags of cement mix crunch under those well loved Vans as Ramsey’s boy leaves, and Michael finds himself full of a resentment he can’t name, something that digs deep inside of him and sends a blossoming of foreboding through his bones. He lowers his pistol, his arm throbbing painfully from the bullet still lodged deep within his muscle, and waits for Ray Narvaez to turn back around.

But he doesn’t, backtracking his way out of the warehouse doors like Michael hadn’t even been worth the rounds it cost to save him. Michael stays rooted to the spot, feeling his pulse wind down until the tension leaks from his body as though every breath he took siphoned a little more resistance, a little more fight out of him.

He goes home. He grits his teeth and pulls the bullet from his muscle, wondering how many fragments he’s left behind, and whether the residual lead will be enough to kill him. He strips his clothes and showers, standing unmoving in the water to embrace the onslaught of misery that impales him with every second that passes, amplifying the quiet until it’s too loud to be tolerated. He dresses, eats leftover pizza, and puts a gun to his head.

Two minutes and thirty four seconds later, he puts it back on the nightstand, and throws himself into bed, cursing Ramsey and his walking posterboy of the elite criminal empire for piquing his curiosity.

 

///

 

He sees Ray again, not a week later, when he’s twenty three stories up and stepping out of a mirrored office elevator, his pistol hidden smartly in his jacket. There’s a man named Jerry Dantana on this floor, sitting neatly in his corner office as Weazel News senior producer, coating himself in embezzled funds from the Los Santos bureau of public affairs. His snark hasn’t won him any fans, and Michael is about to collect himself an easy forty thousand dollars as a hired hitman.

It’s a Saturday, and the halls are empty. The twelve hundred dollar suit he’s donned himself in for the occasion tugs at the muscles in his arms that are used to open, non restrictive clothing, and his collar makes him feel restrained in ways he hasn’t known since he was a child. He attempts to stay casual, nodding his head at a red-eyed associate who looks too frazzled to even be suspicious, before scanning his eyes over the otherwise empty newsroom.

 _Jerry Dantana_ shines at him through gold lettering embellished across the door, and he slips inside, pulling his pistol from his jacket as he takes in the mahogany flavored room. His eyesight tracks across the clean, clutter-free workstation, and stops. His heart seizes.

_No._

Ray Narvaez is sitting cross-legged across the desk like a mischievous child, the ghost of a smile across his face. Dantana is on his knees in front of him, mouth duct taped shut and eyes full of a quivering fury as the producer tries to squeeze out of his zip-tied handcuffs.

_NO._

“You,” Michael sneers, feeling the sweet sting of rage boil through him. “I told you to fuck off. Dantana is _my_ contract.”

Ray raises his hands in acquiescence, and seems to be in a considerably lighter mood than during their previous encounter. The playfulness is far more disconcerting than the stoicism, and Michael can barely hear Ray’s relaxed words over the instinctual warnings that are lighting up the back of his skull.

“Chill, man. I’m not here to take your cut.”

Michael holds his pistol at the ready, his eyes never leaving the hollow brown of Ray’s, watching the sparks light up his pupils as Ray smiles, casually and without preamble. There’s a gleam of madness there, a hint of the same recklessness that plagues the pristine misery of Michael’s daily process, and the raw _honesty_ of it smacks Michael across the face.

“What the fuck do you want then?” Michael spits, ignoring the chill Narvaez’ presence gives his spine, to focus instead on what the assshole is _taking_ from him. He’s fucking furious, because all of his planning, his meticulous attention to detail and his considerations for wild cards, none of it had accounted for Ramsey’s interference, nor that of a mercenary that has very clearly lost his mind, if those unapologetically cruel eyes were anything to go by.

“I’ve already told you,” Ray replies, words slipping from his tongue like he’s a default speaker in all the things Michael hates to hear. Like he’s programmed to speak on a frequency that edges Michael’s emotional reaction up a notch or two. “Ramsey politely requests a meeting.”

“Was the first dick not enough? Should I “politely request” that he eat a bag of them?”

Ray grins, and it’s carnal, _knowing,_ and Michael feels a rush of exposure that makes no sense in his apprehension-addled mind. He feels like he’s given too much away by saying barely anything at all, and he really should have known better than to open his fucking mouth. These are Ramsey’s men after all, and they take a challenge much like they take lives -- willingly, and well.

“Alright, let me rephrase,” Ray offers calmly, sliding off of the desk and tugging on Dantana’s hair, just to get the man riled up. “Ramsey politely _demands_ a meeting.”

“So you cockblocked my hit? For being Ramsey’s bitch, that’s pretty fucking juvenile.”

Ray frowns at him, but Michael can’t be bothered to curve his insults. There’s too much money riding on this, and every moment that passes is another opportunity for someone to come knocking. Dantana’s eyes keep glancing towards the door expectantly, hopefully, and it’s putting Michael on edge.

“Let me guess,” Ray starts, and Michael can pinpoint the exact moment the beanie-clad fuck weasel slips back into lethargy, his voice dripping in condescending boredom. “You were going to sneak up here, covert,” he gives Michael a once over, “--nice digs, by the way. Very business chic.”

“--Fuck you, this was like, two grand--”

“-- _And_ ,” Ray interrupts, shooting Michael a displeased glance that Michael returns with equal loathing. “Your plan was to, I dunno, take him out silently and sneak back, casual as fuck, and the cops would never even notice you, right?”

Michael narrows his eyes, heart hammering wildly in his chest. He knows where Ray is taking this, and he’s already racking his brain trying to figure out a new exit strategy that’ll get him down twenty three floors without using the elevator or stairs.

_Fuck._

“Don’t you fucking do it,” he snarls. “Ramsey or no, I will blow your fucking head off and deal with the consequences later.”

“Come on, let’s be more creative than that,” Ray grins imploringly at him, and it’s so animalistic that Michael has all of two seconds to be enraptured before Ray raises his rifle and shoots out the floor to ceiling window panes, splattering the ground with casings and glass as Dantana leans sharply away and Michael hurriedly shields his eyes.

“Dude, what the _fuck!_ ” Michael yells, and he can hear the woman screaming from the news floor outside. She’ll be panicking, reaching for her phone, and in fifteen minutes police will be halfway up the high rise, blocking Michael in with orders to shoot on sight. He can kill Dantana here and now, but what good is that fucking money if he isn’t alive to collect it?

“You stupid motherfucker!” He seethes, teeth nearly cracking as he grinds them together vehemently. “How the _fuck_ do you want us to get out of here now?!”

Ray doesn’t seem to have trouble hearing him over the whistling of the wind that howls by the jagged edges of glass. He shrugs good naturedly. “Ramsey has a ride coming for me. But then again, I’m a model employee. That’s what respect gets you.”

And Michael isn’t an idiot, he understands that he’s been set up and cornered like the fucking wild animal that he is, but he’s too livid to find any appreciation in their flawless execution.

“I’ll make you a deal, Jones,” Ray continues, slinging his rifle back over his shoulder and letting the wind take the curl out of the exposed edges of his hair as he holds out his hand. “I’ll let you catch a ride with me as long as you hand over that pistol of yours. You’re trigger happy, and I just can’t endorse that when it’s pointed at me.”

There’s a moment of absolute silence while they stare each other down, Ray’s smirk belying any idea that Michael has a choice in the matter, and Michael bites the inside of his cheek until he can taste blood, because he _hates_ being set up, and he _hates_ smooth talkers.

He lets out a slew of curses before handing his gun over, watching Ray tuck it away with an unquantifiable amount of rage. He curls and uncurls his fists as Ray crunches over the bits of glass to look out the busted window and scan the skies, the balconies, and the ground below before stepping back in.

“ETA on the chopper is around thirty seconds, but police are already on their way. We can--”

He’s cut off as Michael slams a fist into his jaw, and Michael can feel the split of his skin like the rushing relief of endorphins, cathartic and satisfying. Ray stumbles back, catching himself at the last moment as blood blooms from his lip, but he’s smiling in a way that Michael would only ever think to see in the mirror. The reaction floors him, and he lowers his fist slowly, wondering exactly how fucked in the head Ray Narvaez truly is.

“You wanna fight, we can fight, Jones. Just not here, and not now.” He motions vaguely towards Dantana with one hand while smearing the blood from his lip across the other in a half-assed attempt to wipe it off. “Probably want to take care of Executive Guido over here first though. Always waste good money.”

Michael quirks an eyebrow at him, because there’s too many things he finds familiar here, despite his anger. There’s an undeniable pull, an affinity that’s lighting up sparks in the recesses of his mind, undeterred by the exterior paint jobs that portray them as combatants. The humor is dark, melancholy, with an air of profound acceptance that Michael aches to find in each miserable day, regardless of what mentality it will cost him.

But it’s only when Ray refuses to give Michael his pistol back to turn Dantana’s skull into a chunky red smoothie does Michael feel like overcoming suicide every night for years might actually be yielding some promise. Ray grins at him through the blood on his teeth, motioning towards the window, and Michael can’t help the twitch of an almost-smile that creeps up on his face when he silently agrees and drags Dantana forward by the collar of his shirt, heckling the hauntings of a broken man as a final, delirious goodbye before he pushes the producer over the edge.

Dantana’s muffled scream stays with them as he plummets the full twenty-three stories, landing with a sickening crack as his bones shatter upon impact, twisting his limbs into a grotesque and unusual display across the pavement. People scream, tripping over themselves to get away from the mangled body, and the cops converging on the street aim their sights upwards, shielding their eyes from the sun and reflective windows as they try to locate the right floor.

The grin on Ray’s face is feral. Alarming. His eyes linger on the body, soaking in the image of Dantana far below them like he gains empowerment through the mutilation of the world around him. Michael shivers in discomfort, but doesn’t move away.

“Hey, you did him a favor,” Ray muses lightly, and Michael can hear the chopping of blades in the sky, edging ever closer. “His audience views are going to skyrocket.”

Michael has no reply, save the crazed desire to appreciate a joke that lies at the expense of a mangled body across the sidewalk. But there’s no time to dwell on exactly how fucked that makes him, because a chopper is being expertly levelled with the shattered glass window, and Ray is tossing his rifle to a man whose face is painted a terrifying bleed of red and black. Ray jumps aboard gracefully, like his worn out Vans have given him all the purchase he’d ever need to acclimate to stepping across three feet of plummeting gravity.

Michael hesitates, unsure if he wants to follow, unwilling to be tugged along like a puppet in a set piece. But there’s a hand being thrust towards him, and he locks eyes with a legend, mustachioed and tattooed and donned in a suit that costs three times the price of Michael’s. Eyes meet his, reflecting his consuming hatred for the city, the spark of intellect, and the lust of a rampage. He accepts, because again, he doesn’t quite feel like this is where his story ends, and he hasn’t held out this long just to fall twenty-three stories onto a busted up body.

He’s yanked inside the hard lines of the helicopter and plants himself dubiously on the floor next to Ray, who is his only connection here despite their miserable hatred. He keeps his eyes locked onto Ramsey, who sighs eloquently and gives the pilot the motion to fly.

“Afternoon, Michael. Ah, I see you’re already dressed for your interview. Excellent. Very impressive.”

Ray smirks.

Michael’s blood boils, and cools. He remains level, and that’s new for him.

“You mean to tell me you’re not buying me out?”

Ramsey gives him a dismissive look that borders on disappointment. His tattooed fingers are held tightly onto the net above them, the only thing that keeps him from flying out of the chopper as skyscrapers breeze past them, flapping the edges of his finely fitted jacket.

“Jones, do you know what I found out a few years ago? They don’t make weapons of mass destruction to cater. They’re not a la carte, you see. You can’t pick and choose the qualities you want, the results you want, and you certainly can’t pay someone enough to create such a lawless fucking thing.”

When Michael only stares back at him, the words “The fuck are you--” on his lips, before Ramsey interrupts again, as though Michael had never spoken. As though he’d never had the _right_ to.

“You have to _find_ one, Michael. I tried to make some. Mould some. They were dead within the year, the poor bastards. But you -- you’re pre-fabricated! You’re perfectly prepackaged to contain every god-forsaken quality I need in a crew member. As for your resume...”

Ramsey pulls his phone out of his pocket, the browser opened to a foreign video hosting site that advertises uncensored war footage and gore caught on camera. He holds it out for Michael to watch, keeping his hand steady as the helicopter pitches and rocks, flying them out of the concrete jungle and into the hills.

Michael watches as a pedestrian captures the footage of him robbing a local jewelers. Half of the screen is taken up by the dented fender of a red SUV, but Michael can see himself clearly in the distance, a gun held to the temple of a foolishly brave security guard. His own grin is maddening, disconcerting to stare at, and he braces himself for what he knows is coming. A shout from the guard, an ill-advised bid for freedom, before Michael’s pistol silences him, skull cracking open as a bullet exits his cheek, taking half the guard’s jaw along with it. Pedestrians scream, the camera shakes as a man curses in Spanish, and the body crumples to the floor.

“He’s rigged it! It’s all rigged!” someone shouts, but it’s too late. There’s the booming sound of death incarnate, and the screen is filled with the complete white-out of fire and destruction. Silence. The video ends.

“Neat thing, livestreaming,” Geoff comments idly, slipping the phone back into his pocket. “Makes for ensuring good footage is always captured.”

Michael is reeling, because Geoff _fucking_ Ramsey is standing above him, his eyes alight with something akin to pride, a stroke of curiosity, and Michael is having trouble swallowing the idea that all of this was to get him on board to something he’s only considered on the days when crippling depression hasn’t taken its toll.

He’s going to be asked to join the crew, but doubt lingers within him. He’s never been after the money, and for all he knows, that’s what Ramsey’s crew specializes in. He won’t weaponize himself for the sake of lining another man’s pockets.

“How much of a cut are we talking,” he asks, because he’s wary of all things, and Ramsey and his little nerd of a sharpshooter aren’t any different in his book.

Ramsey grins at him, a little chaotic, but it’s a controlled madness. It’s the same look he sees in the man with the painted eyes who has yet to remove his finger from the trigger; he sees it in the lithe man who sits opposite, hair in disarray as he taps into a golden-cased smartphone; and the same look he sees in the pilot, whose eyes flit back to study him, expression glinting underneath a spray of red hair.

“I don’t pay you in money,” Ramsey replies, pulling an ACR from the rack and shoving it into Michael’s waiting arms like a particularly doting father. “I pay in good fucking times. You in, Jones?”

He can _feel_ Ray’s smirk beside him, and for some indescribable reason, Michael looks to him for confirmation, for guidance into the uprooting of his entire profession. The manic fire he saw in Geoff Ramsey’s eyes pales in comparison to the unholy craze he sees in Narvaez, tamed only by the hoodie that frames the angles of his face. There is something different there, something foreign, something that begs for his attention against the drowning tide of familiarity and a well-tended disaster.

He sees his future in that unguarded expression, and it promises neither longevity, nor sanity.

But he’d never really been interested in all that anyway.

“You bet your fucking ass I’m in,” he grins, and tightens his fingers around the grip.

 

///

 

Michael doesn’t adjust well.

The ‘team’ aspect is new for him, and he doesn’t know which part is harder to swallow: that someone will be there to back him up, or that others are so willing to put their lives in his hands. He stumbles through this arrangement like a flighty, wild animal, and only the hefty perks of a being apart of a crew keep him from bailing out entirely. The scores are bigger, the armament is better, and they operate like a hive mind, having already learned one another’s strengths and weaknesses, knowing when to cover, and when to trust.

Michael performs beautifully across a battlefield, but poorly across a table, and initially, he struggles to find his place outside of a hired gun.

Geoff lives up to his name. He’s an icon in this city, a beacon for the restless, the ingenious, the corporately corrupt and unquantifiably chaotic. He _breathes_ in one direction, and gang territories shift like tectonic plates, waves of betrayal and destruction formulating a new uncharted land and leaders, both ripe with potential. He is unchallenged, but in that top tier of elitism, he’s found an unexpected peace. His twenties were a bloodshed-fueled rampage, his thirties were calculated, and now, in his forties, he has very little to fear from the world, and simmers quietly in his own tamed fires, content. Unburdened. Michael, in the dredges of his own mind, cannot relate.

Jack is an artisan. Every man and woman the crew needs connections to for their expensive profession, she owns a small part of their soul. Anyone who is noteworthy in San Andreas owes their fame to Jack in some small (or large) way, and she holds onto those favors like treasured little keepsakes, plucking them out _years_ later as a vindictive reminder for those whose heads had stopped fitting in their gold-rimmed doorways. She holds a monopoly on the foreign imports, and is the largest shareholder for both Legendary Motorsports, Elitas Travel, and Warstock Cache & Carry. She has never been (and will never be) in a situation where she can’t coerce herself out of danger by sheer connections alone. Michael, in his solitude, cannot relate.

Ryan is a fearsome thing. He is brutal in every sense of the word, but only for as long as you pay him. For the right price, he’ll gouge a man’s eyes out, seal them in individual ziplock baggies, carefully transport them halfway across the city, then quietly watch as he makes the man’s brother shove the slimy, plump, blue-irsed things down his own throat while he grinds a gun against the sobbing man’s head. For the right price, Geoff can send any kind of message he wants. Ryan’s detached efficiency is an incredible asset, a prized skill, but for Ryan, it’s only a job. Once the man has gotten the message, choking violently and vomiting up parts of his own brother as he shakes and screams, Ryan’s officially off-duty, and goes home to make a nice dinner, and curl up with a book and his dog. Michael, enveloped by this life as he is, cannot relate.

Gavin is a terror in his own right, if only for the unpredictable calamity he brings to the world around him. He easily powers through Michael’s defenses in the first weeks, adoringly bemused at Michael’s offstandish behavior and inability to adjust, and within him, Michael finds his first true friend. They partner together well, feeding off of one another’s ability to simply _deal_ with the other -- like two negatives blossoming into a positive -- and amplifying it to a partnership that is as efficient as it is destructive. But Gavin -- Gavin washes their money, doubles as an incredibly shrewd businessman, and the twin lives that he leads give way to interests that lie well outside the realms of laundering and taking pop-shots at cops for fun. An annoying fact which Michael figures out easily after being stood up at a bar for the third time in a month. Gavin _exists_ outside of the carnage.

Michael, well. He can’t relate. He can’t relate to any of them.

Except maybe--

_No._

Michael notices it long before he acknowledges it, the strange sort of emptiness that lingers in their personal atmospheres once a job is done. The rest of the crew gathers to discuss, then separates to head home, like waves timed to the gravitational pull of superiority. In when they need the fix, out when they don’t.

Their headquarters, if you could deem it as such, is a high rise condo that bears Jack’s title of ownership and not much else. Ray is always the first to arrive, and it only takes a few weeks for Michael to realize that the boy never actually leaves. He remains there long after the crew has dissolved, tethered to the couch like a landmark of the only world he’s ever known, waiting for the next tide to come in, patient and calm. The quiet before the storm.

Michael goes back to his downtown apartment, personalized and homely and filled with everything he’s ever owned, and slowly begins to notice how disconnected he is from it all. He’s displaced in time, suffering through an existence that he tried to create here, trinkets of a life he was never fully ready to accept, a sublimely sought-after misery that always ended with a ritualistic contemplation of suicide.

He starts staying longer at the condo, fumbling through the excuses he knows that Ray, in his constant state of awareness, will see right though, and blearily wonders when he started giving a damn what Ray thinks.

Ray only smiles that infuriatingly _knowing_ smile at him from where he’s plastered against the couch, Xbox whirring to life as Michael disassembles and cleans his rifle for the third time that night. They don’t talk much, no more than they have to, and it slowly evolves into a tense understanding. Some simmering heat is still lying dormant between them, some calamity that Michael isn’t ready to acknowledge, and both of them are content to let it fester out of some mutual, fucked-up curiosity.

Two dogs circling the ring, sizing up their opponent, ignoring the bait.

 

///

 

“So what’s the deal with Narvaez?”

Gavin makes a sour face at him as they start unloading the (frankly alarmingly large) haul they’d just picked up from the Mexican joint down the street. “What, X-Ray?”

Michael rolls his eyes, still not used to the casual nicknames. After two months, he’s still working through his upheaval at initiation, and the realization that the Fakes aren’t nearly as hardcore in their private lives as they were in the news is both terrifying, yet pacifying. Human after all, then.

“Why do you ask?” Gavin mumbles, his cheeks filled with whatever mystery meat that managed to drain Michael of thirty-four solid bucks.

Michael knows that whatever he says is going to be a neon fucking sign for his suspicious interest in a particular crew member, but he _has_ to know, and Gavin is the first logical step. They’ve built a rapport by now, an instant liking in their shared humor, and Michael’s found comfort in Gavin’s unapologetically flawed persona. He trusts Gavin, and that’s something very rare.

“Kind of a dick, isn’t he?”

Gavin looks at him like Michael’s spoken with such a heavy accent he can’t quite decipher the words, even if he _knows_ it’s English.

“Not really, no?”

Michael stays silent, inwardly fuming at his inability to reiterate just how _off_ Ray seems to him. Gavin hums lightly, sipping gingerly at his red bull like he’s just come to some sort of conclusion.

“Mm, I get it. Because of the whole, backed you into a corner mess, yeah? Michael, you know someone had to do it, you can’t hold a grudge against the bloke just because--”

“It’s not just that,” Michael interrupted, because of _course_ that’s what it’s going to come across as. Bitterness. “He doesn’t really… I don’t know, man. He’s weird around me. Like, he doesn’t talk to me like he talks to you.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t look about two seconds away from making a dog’s dinner of his face, do I?”

Michael rubs his face irritably with his hands. “Gavin, what the fuck does that even--”

“It _means,_ ” Gavin starts, pausing only to swallow. “That you’re not exactly the inviting sort, are you? Ray’s been through a lot, and he’s not going to waste his time on somebody that won’t waste theirs on him.”

It makes sense. It _does._ Because Michael knows he’s been standoffish as he tries to adjust, but there’s something different in the way that Ray’s been treating him in comparison to the the rest of the crew.

Geoff has been beaming with pride at every new trick Michael pulls from his ass. Michael knows his way around Primacord and polymer-bonded explosives like he’d been born with the knowledge hardwired into his physical body, and Geoff is _loving_ it almost as much as he loves Michael’s marksmanship. Keeps assuring Michael he’ll fit right in with every back-pat and freshly acquired 20K.

Jack is subdued, waiting for Michael to approach _her_ with a question, but adamantly helpful and eager once she’s been sought out. Her nail polish is chipped and cracked as she pours him a shot of whisky, sharing anecdotes and stories that rival the larger-than-life legends that surround her name in the darker corners of the city. Her smiles are guarded, but genuine, and when he’s graced with them, Michael feels like things might be okay here, even for just a moment.

Ryan’s quiet chaos is a welcome respite, and Michael’s already spent countless hours doing recon with the man, learning how they operate, savoring the odd narrative from past heists that fill Michael with a certain sense of appreciative hope. Ryan treats him as if he already belongs, even if it’s only Michael’s skill he values.

But Ray… Ray just _watches._ He doesn’t seek Michael out, nor does he remove himself from the room if only the two of them remain. He’s perpetually lingering on the edges of Michael’s vision, deeply engrossed in his DS while somehow keeping the air around himself sparking with a focused presence, like nothing in the world would ever take him by surprise, and Michael is low-key terrified to be alone with him. Some omnipresent force that’s both contained, yet alarmingly volatile.

It’s ridiculous. It’s fucking _stupid_ in it’s own self-righteous importance.

And really, maybe Gavin’s right. Maybe he just needs to give the guy a fucking chance.

But he can’t deny--

“I get the feeling he wants to fucking kill me, man.”

Gavin laughs, as though Michael’s blunt admission were a family-friend joke, and they were all well-versed enough in one another’s language that that kind of statement was considered a sign of endearment.

“Come on, now. He would’ve done it already then, wouldn’t he?”

Michael stays silent, brooding over his tacos, his mind warbling at how ineffective his words are when it comes to vilifying a meme-loving sniper who has the entire crew wrapped around his meticulously talented fingers.

“He’s a good bloke,” Gavin starts, taking Michael’s silence as an invitation to further invite camaraderie. “Bit wonky in the head, but who are we to judge, right?”   

In that, at least, Gavin finally makes a solid point, and Michael lets the subject drop.

 

///

 

It takes eleven weeks before Ray decides to speak to him outside of coms.

“I’m heading out. You wanna come?”

Michael pauses, stirring the sound of Ray’s voice around in his head until it makes sense. He’s holed up in the heist room, reorganizing dossiers and revelling in the quiet time he desperately needs just to make _sense_ of his place in the crew. They’re alone in the condo, and Ray’s practiced button-tapping has quickly become the soundtrack of Michael’s night-life, so the question is surely addressed to him.

“No, I’m good here. Probably head home soon.”

There’s no response, and Michael figures that’s the end of it. He doesn’t turn, even when he can hear the creak of wood outside the doorway, can _feel_ Ray’s presence like a perforated cut out in the atmosphere around him, a shadow of something far more monumental. Michael’s body tenses like it always does when he’s alone in a room with Ray, the sharp clench of muscle that feels more like a reminder than it does surprise.

“Come on,” Ray chastises lightly, the sound of man who already knows he’s won his battles. “You’ll love it, scout’s honor. Bring your rifle.”

Michael wills away the goosebumps that harken back to weeks of cold-sweat nightmares and lays a hand protectively over the rifle he’s been gutting and cleaning as a piss-poor excuse not to go home. His pulse is thudding warningly in his throat.

“You gonna kill me, Narvaez?”

Ray takes the question seriously, and it’s the only reason Michael truly believes him when he finally answers, “Not tonight,” and leaves the door open for Michael to follow him.

 

///

 

He makes Michael drive. When Michael stares skeptically at him, Ray produces an affronted look that the street lights try to demonize with their low quality flicker-and-fail.

“I don’t have a licence, Michael. You trying to get arrested?”

Michael can’t decide if he’s kidding or not, and even worse, he can’t decide where the bubble of amusement that threatens to spill over his features comes from. He still doesn’t trust Ray, not when their beginnings so easily mirrored a bad DC origins story. Or a good one. He’s more of a Marvel guy, really. But, Ray offers the promise of an interesting night, and Michael is running out of excuses to linger.

“Fine. You got a destination in mind?”

Ray nods, loading their rifles into the back as Michael slides easily into the driver’s seat of Ray’s shit-brown Vacca.

Surprisingly, Ray directs well, unlike Gavin, who’d let you know about that left turn you were supposed to make about four seconds _after_ you’d crossed the intersection. It’s another little facet that makes it harder for Michael to hold on to the toxic hatred he’s carrying around for the sniper, even if he can’t navigate his reasoning for the disapproval in the first place. As much as they avoid conversation between one another, they work together, and they work together _closely;_ close enough for Michael to orient himself with Ray’s deadpan and dry humor, his quick and precise efficiency, and his questionable, flip-flopping moral standings.

It’s foreign in its own right, but something about it feels oddly familiar. It resonates.

“I get it,” he starts gently, chancing a look at Ray in the passenger seat as the realization trickles in. “You’re basically Catwoman.”

Ray watches him thoughtfully, and Michael is half hoping he thinks the outburst is bizarre, maybe uncomfortable enough to cease any further conversation, but Ray just follows his train of thought dutifully and unperturbed.

“Hmm. Independent, morally dubious, incredibly sexy, good with my hands… Is that what you’re implying?”

“No, I meant you’re a fucking unpredictable cunt.”

Ray snorts in laughter, and Michael tries hard not to smile as amusement passes through him, riding the wave of his surprise. He _tries._ Ray hides his mouth behind his hand, like he’s not quite used to having his face display an emotional response without getting his permission first.

“Alright. I was wondering why you didn’t go with Deadshot, but it makes sense, with you being Batman and all.”

Michael pulls a face. “How the fuck so?”

Ray stretches out casually, moving his seat back to kick his feet up on the dash. “Well, where to start? Physically impressive, obviously--” (Michael shifts uncomfortably) “--Intimidating, you’re self-motivated, obsessively passionate about the work you do… oh, not to mention the crippling depression.”

Michael feels the wince on his face like a tangible wound, and hates himself for it. Ray is grinning at him, eternally pleased for letting Michael set something up for him to so beautifully dismantle in the manner of a few short sentences. The cat who got the mouse who got the cheese.

“Don’t worry man. I’ve got the cure for that. Right on Hollytree, then park by the fence. We’ll have to trek up the hill a bit.

‘A bit’ turns into a small hike, an activity that Michael is both remorse to take so late at night, yet oddly appreciate of once it starts revealing those small little nuances he’s half convinced himself don’t really exist.

“What path are you even following? You’re all over the goddamn place.”

Ray continues his sporadic trail-blazing, nothing but light footsteps in those dusty Vans that have gone from white and black to gray and grayer. “I go up a different way each time; cops haven’t figured out where I shoot from yet, and a beaten path might as well be a fucking highlighter. Besides, never pegged you as a guy to hate exercise.”

“Never pegged you as a guy to initiate it,” Michael shoots back, but he can’t bite back the curiosity on his tongue, and his rifle feels heavy from disuse on his back.

Ray leads him to a ridge halfway up the mountain, tucked beneath an overhang of earth and spiked with boulders that are older than the city itself. The lights of Los Santos are bright, a sphere of blue and white that reflect high into the inky sky, a siren’s song for dreamers and desolates. It’s not yet late enough to be morning, and the coastal highway far below them is a lightbrite of headlights that blip in and out of trees, a moderately blinding flash-and-die that Michael thinks only a tourist could find alluring. Like a fucking moth to a flame.

Ray is already prone, tucking himself neatly into the cracks as he screws a scope onto his rifle. In those flashes, highlighted by shallow moonlight, Ray’s face is pure, and it looks both far younger and older than any age Michael can calculate. It’s almost as frightening as the aura of unchecked mania the boy carries with him, but it gives a sense of _humanity_ to all of it, which is the only facet Michael can lock down on that doesn’t slip from his fingers the moment he grasps it.

He slides down next to Ray and silently follows his lead, the ground a stark cold beneath him as jagged rocks dig into his forearms. Crickets chirp and still with each click of aluminum underneath practiced fingers, and whatever peace he normally finds within the process is tainted with Ray’s wildcard presence.

“You wanna tell me what the fuck we’re doing?”

Ray doesn’t turn to look at him, which is normal. He’ll outwardly stare at Michael during pre-heist missions, but once he’s prompted to courteously _look_ at the person speaking to him, he’ll avert his eyes in disinterest.

“You’re pretty good at leading targets, yeah?”

Michael catches on quickly, because you can’t spend your days pulling jobs with five other human beings and _not_ learn their tells, and eyes the cars below him ponderously.

“Not nearly as good as you. Which I could have told you. So if you dragged my ass all the way out here to gloat--”

“Goddamn you’re tense, man,” Ray interrupts, aligning his scope. “I come up here because it’s easy to get a hit when they’re coming out of that tunnel, and the pigs won’t climb their fat asses up here. It takes about twenty-three minutes to get a chopper out this far, and we’ll be gone by the time they call it in. Now, if you’re not into all that, no shame, just speak up.”

Michael is opening his mouth to do… something. To not feel overpowered, mainly, before--

“But you shouldn’t lie to your friends,” Ray finishes. “That’s a golden rule.”

Michael scoffs. “Is that what you think we are?”

“Friends? Maybe not. What would you call us?”

“Colleagues,” Michael deadpans, and looks through his scope to line up the tunnel exit, just barely glimpsing the house-of-mirrors yellow lights that endlessly reflect the walls, nauseating tunnel vision of the highest order.

Ray smirks to himself, and Michael feels it more than he really sees it.

“So how many times has a ‘colleague’ put a knife in your back, if this is the way you treat them?”

Michael glares, but he can’t be sure how scathing it is in the darkness. Not nearly enough, he guesses.

“You’re one to fucking talk, aren’t you? It’s like you take pride in your face being a beacon for my fist.” When Ray doesn’t answer, Michael knows he’s being prompted, and the self-righteous silence is worse than Ray’s absent defense. “You don’t talk, you don’t level with me… you don’t even have the goddamn courtesy to look _annoyed_ that I don’t leave the penthouse. You just sit on the fucking couch like we’re goddamn roomies.”

“Hey,” Ray interrupts, sounding endearingly put off. “I’ve been a freeloader _way_ before you showed up, Jones.”

If it were _anyone_ else, the stark dismissal would only be fuel for Michael’s fire, the spark that to light up the rest of his tirade against Ray’s unsettling behavior. But he _knows_ Ray’s blunt demeanor, knows it’s only an invitation for more of Michael’s biting wordplay, and Ray’s cornered him with it again like some kind of sick masochist. He plays Michael like a fucking fiddle, checking all the right boxes to get just the right responses, and Michael is slowly realizing that relying on his arrogance to maneuver around Ray’s intentions is like playing hopscotch in a minefield.

Which is as pointless as it is worthless.

“Whatever. You creep me the fuck out, is all.”

Silence stills around them, and it’s less of Ray festering on Michael’s words and more of Ray focusing through a scope, which only serves to shred Michael’s patience across the jagged edges of the rocks beneath them. Can’t even insult the guy properly with his pick-and-choose emotional response, as though Ray considers himself personally above all condemnation.

“Target in shifts,” Ray starts, suddenly all business despite how aloofly his voice echoes in their tiny stone overhang. “And keep to lower high class, no pop shots at any elites.”

Michael snorts at the sudden development of Ray’s conscience. “Afraid of merc-ing a friend?”

“No, afraid of merc-ing good money. High-up like that, someone’s bound to put a bounty on them eventually. Can’t collect it if he’s already dead.”

Wrong again, then, Michael thinks, and lines up his shot.

It’s a luxury car, unknowingly coming straight down the bay towards the glint of their rifles, which blend seamlessly against a starry background. A hand is flopped carelessly out the window, the red pinprick of a cigarette held between the driver’s fingers, and Michael leads the target through the turn--

The window becomes a spiderwebbed flare of red, and the car begins to drift lazily into oncoming traffic, prompting a cacophonous display of car horns and screeching tires. Michael grins to himself as headlights swerve below him, playthings for his ire, and he can’t deny the sweet catharsis that sings through his veins once luck has run out and the once-luxury Coquette slams head first into an unsuspecting SUV.

“So,” Ray begins, pulling Michael from his moment while still letting him linger on the tendrils as he invitingly lines up his own shot. “You’re half convinced I’m going to kill you--” Michael twitches uncomfortably at Ray throwing confetti at the elephant in the room, “--because I don’t ‘level’ with you?”

Michael bites the inside of his cheek at the undeniably brusque snark, but still, he can hear the tentative offer of complacency underneath it all, and he knows it’s the best he’s going to get from the inhuman thing that’s nestled in the rocks beside him.

“No, it’s…” He stops, trying to formulate a nicety before deciding that Ray simply doesn’t deserve the consideration. “I don’t fucking know you, do I? I’ve been getting to know everyone in this fucking crew except for you.”

“Then ask, dumbass.”

Ray fires, absorbing the kickback like the fucking champion he is, and Michael lets the moment slip, far too invested in watching the Jeep Ray just dispossessed of a driver crash unceremoniously into the concrete barricade. The force of the impact flips the vehicle onto its side, tearing out one of the headlights, and a sedan that’s been following too closely barrels its front end into the Jeep’s roof with a satisfying crunch.

He’s grinning, plain evidence of how badly he's been needing the release, and he’s suddenly terrified of what it would mean to be having a good time with Narvaez, and what Ray could read from it.  

“Fine,” Michael snaps, trying to regain the annoyance he’s bitterly clinging to, but it lacks the heat it would normally have. “How long you been with Rams-- ...with Geoff?”

“Twenty years,” Ray replies, without the barest hint of hesitation.

Michael scoffs again, because fucking _bullshit._ Nothing in Ray’s voice gives him away as being anything but sincere, but Michael’s learned enough to know Ray could give the eulogy of his own mother with a lexicon so dry it would parch the fucking sea, so it’s hard to differentiate.

“You look great for your age, man,” he quips, because there’s not a chance in hell that Ray is over thirty, and irritation is bubbling in him again at Ray’s ill-timed humor, at the tainting of what could be the beginnings of their understanding.

“I’ve worked for him since I was eight,” Ray explains calmly. “Your shot, by the way.”

And suddenly, Michael is _reeling._ The words don’t align in a way he was expecting, and even though Ray _does_ operate through a visceral honesty, it’s fucking hard to take him at face value when easy dismissal is a readily available a la carte option. The boy -- man? -- doesn’t sound entirely done with his explanation though, so Michael obediently lines up another shot, easier now, since the mayhem below is starting to slow traffic through the tunnel.

“I was a spotter for them over in the East side of town, back when they were first getting attention. They’d been having trouble with Marabunta raiding their safehouses, and police were heavy at the time after the whole gang war had gone down. One of their guys, Mac, went around in the neighborhood, looking for kids, usually when we were playing basketball or some shit, and offered us fifty bucks a week to radio in when cops or blue-and-white jersied fucks were strolling around.”

Michael’s silenced shot creams through the window of a lifted truck, and the driver’s muscle spasm must jerk the wheel, because the whole thing fucking tips and rolls, powering over the two cars in front of him that had slowed to better take in the carnage of the first two victims. The sound of shattering glass and screams echo up the valley, and just faintly, Michael can hear the distant wail of sirens.

It’s the most continuous stream of words he’s ever heard from Ray outside of off-key singing during missions that require an extraordinary amount of silence. And he’s fucking hooked on the sound, the first free hit, _more_ than eager to watch the knotted mess of a man next to him begin to unravel itself.

“So how’d you move up?”

Ray shrugs, like his story shouldn’t garner any particular interest. “I got greedy, I guess. The money was good, so I stuck around, was always there when Mac showed up to offer up spotter positions. I don’t know the ends and outs of what happened, really -- Marabunta probably figured out what he was doing, roving the streets like a fucking idiot -- but a car rolled up one day and they gunned him down, right in front of us. Kids scattered fucking everywhere, and I ducked behind of the benches. I don’t know if they figured they were clear, or if I just took them by surprise, but once their backs were turned I picked up Mac’s gun and put a full mag into them. Thought I could get a bonus.”

Michael’s watching Ray’s lips move as the man peers through his scope, like the words are heavier, and he needs to give them any of the five senses he can spare. He doesn't exactly remember the eyesight tracking that led him there, but he doesn’t have the willpower to remove the gaze as he asks, “At eight years old?”

Ray scoffs, slicing another shot through the night that erupts the highway below them with more chaos. “And what were you doing at eight, Jones? Tea parties with your principal?”

Michael doesn’t respond, but it’s an answer in its own right. Validated, Ray continues.

“I radioed that shit up quick, using the emergency channel like I’d been told. Voice told me to run down to an intersection, and you bet your ass I fucking listened. Ten minutes later, a car pulls up, I climb in, and Jack fucking Patillo is in the backseat, the boss of my boss of my boss. She takes the gun from me and tells me to stay calm. Her hair was longer then, and she was a little more wild, still digging her feet into the ground. They both were.”

Michael’s lined up two shots since Ray began, but he can’t find the will to press his fingers and interrupt the steady flow of words that are slowly ripping apart any and all of his expectations. Two very fortunate cars brave the shoulder to pass the wreckage on the street, and Michael lets them go, too afraid of shattering this newfound reality with anything louder than the sound of his own soft exhale.

“We go to see Geoff, and I swore I was about to be shot and dumped, but they were fucking _proud_ of me. Asked me what happened, told me I was a brave little shit, yadda yadda. Finally, Geoff asked me what Mac did wrong. And I guess they thought it was profound, but I was just being honest when I told them _He didn’t belong there._ Geoff fucking loved it. Jack was worried about my age, fretting over liability, but Geoff said I was smart enough. Next thing I knew, I was passing out radios and reporting to Jack directly.”

Ray fires again, taking Michael’s turn for him, and Michael doesn’t react, continues to stare down his scope like he’s been punished. Ray continues, unperturbed by the fact that he just blew out the back of a man’s skull as the screams get louder and people start running for the safety of the trees.

“I knew who was a local and who wasn’t, who would turn rat at a better offer. I ran that shit. A year later, she gives me a gun, and my territory spreads. Two years, and I’m brought in as an adviser in meetings. Safehouses, dealers, cops, names, reputations, I had it on lock. By the time I’m fifteen, I’m in their tops ranks. I never told them things ran as smoothly as they did because I killed the guys that threatened to defect, but I think they knew. Once they had settled into their lives and the Fake crew started to form, I was head of security. Now, I’m their top gun. You gonna take your shot?”

Michael fires on reflex, like he’d been programmed for the keyword, but it’s hardly a fair fight anymore. Traffic has slowed to a standstill, and the brunette holier-than-thou woman screaming profanities at a horrified truck driver was just generally pissing him off.

Ray whistles in appreciation as the truck driver gets a chest full of skull fragments, but Michael is still wound around Ray’s words -- honest, and just situationally wild enough for the whole thing to be plausible. When he’d asked, he’d expected a dry one-liner, a distinct reminder to mind his own fucking business, but Ray had laid out his past like he did with everything else -- with relative disinterest.

“So,” Ray asks, starting Michael out of his haze of consideration. “Have I leveled with you?”

Michael shakes the familiarity from his brain and shrugs, because he _isn’t_ Ray, and his emotions belong buried inside of him -- not out on his fucking sleeve.

“You could say. It’s a hell of a story man, but I got to be honest, it’s not doing you any favors.”

Police cars have finally arrived on scene, careening down the street with little respect to the safety of the pedestrians that have distanced themselves from the blood splattered pavement. Ray glares at them as they peel up, but Michael’s half-convinced it’s directed at him when Ray’s voice takes on a slight inflection of disapproval.

“What, honesty turn you off? Did I bare my soul for nothing?”

“Shut the fuck up, Ray,” Michael snaps, but it doesn’t hold half the heat he’d like it to. Ray’s systematic dismantling of his expectations are really starting to get to him. “All it did was tell me that you got to where you are on your own. Ramsey and Patillo were stepping stones, if nothing else.”

“So?”

Ray takes a pop shot at one of officer’s cars, intentionally missing to take out the siren instead, letting the sound fizzle and die as the men on the ground raise their pistols at ghosts.  

“So, everyone needs something, don’t they? Rams-- _Geoff,_ he needs another man for these bigger heists, hence me. Same with the rest of the crew; they all perform as a team, and they need one another to cover their blind spots. Not to suck your fucking dick or anything, but I’ve seen you in the field. You don’t need cover, and you don’t need support. Therefore, you don’t need a goddamn thing from me. And that’s makes me expendable to you.”

Ray hums to himself in a tone that sounds dangerously like amusement. And in that slip of something human, something shaken, Michael hears what might be Ray’s very first lie to him.

“You’re right. I don’t need anything from you.”

Michael doesn’t pursue the subject, satisfied that his argument would hold up in whatever court Ray used to declare victory over Michael on any particular day. Utilizing the small tells they’ve learned in their close working environment, they trade off taking shots the officers, choosing to rile them up rather than soaking their badges. After a few popped tires and disabled sirens, Ray sighs heavily.

“People don’t really get Batman, do they? Especially on the romance front. Fucking _Talia al Ghul,_ ” He mocks the name like it’s a personal insult before continuing. “I’m just saying, there’s no real chemistry with Talia, you know? They set that shit up to portray a perfect dynamic, “endgame” or whatever, but it’s fake. It’s bad for him.”

Michael side-eyes him at the abrupt change of topic. _This_ is the shit that unnerves him. “The fuck are you talking about, man?”

Ray shifts, lining up his scope for one final shot. “Okay, it’s like… you ever hear those stories about people who were starving, then stuffed themselves with food, and their body couldn’t handle it? Or like, when you finally start figuring out how to see in the dark, then someone turns all the fucking lights on, and you’re blind as shit? It’s like that. That’s Talia. That’s that good life, or at least what Bruce is supposed to believe. She’s what happens when you try to escape everything you are to be something you’re not.”

Michael snorts, because, okay, he _gets_ it, but he’s still trying to tie together the two different conversations Ray’s already seamlessly combined in his own mind.

“Alright. So you’re not a fan. Who’d you have him go with?”

His pulse flickers in his neck, warning him of all the reasons he shouldn’t be playing with _this_ particular fire, the fire that’s lined with kerosene and gunpowder, the fire that only needs a breath of interest to ignite it into an uncontrollable blaze.

But hell. He hates the feeling of “what if” far more than he hates the Batman-esque depression Ray so casually delineated against him.

Ray seems unaware of the turmoil in Michael’s head, the bitter argument that’s taking place as Michael ignores his own superbly convincing rationalization that literally no good could come from looking at Ray through a rose-colored glass.

Either that, or Ray doesn’t mind, because he only steadily answers, “Someone like him,” before sending one final round into the hip of an overweight officer, shattering his pelvis as the screams of agony fill in the gaps of their silence. Ray unsettles the dirt as he moves to stand, unscrewing his scope amiss the scraping of rocks and the distant thump of helicopters.

“Antihero bullshit. Catwoman’s better for him, and they both know it.”

Michael doesn’t answer, but follows Ray’s lead, grabbing his rifle and empty mag to start the trek back down the mountain while his pulse continues to hammer warning signs into the skin of his neck. Breathing is harder, and he’d love to attribute it to the bodily response of an unmitigated massacre, but he’s too well versed in his own head to fall for that shit. Ray’s figure in front of him has morphed from something undefinable, to something he’s defining a little _too_ well, and fuck, it only took half an hour of camaraderie and two very distinct sentences for the pinprick lights of bad ideas start to illuminate the recesses of his mind.

Something in the air around him feels different as he follows Ray’s careful steps, and he’s been the victim of enough relationship turning points to recognize how meaningful this exchange just was. The midnight hour of a lackluster Thursday that began his inevitable decision to fuck _something_ up between him and the sharpshooter prodigy.

He shakes his head and tries to focus. They’d be back in the relative safety of Ray’s Vacca before the spotlights could start scoping the area, and for a terrible moment, Michael’s heart _aches_ to know he’s leaving. Even with Ray’s disconcerting presence, the unsettling climax, this past hour has brought him an unprecedented amount of peace -- a cathartic display of prowess and carnage that soothed his soul in a way premeditated heists couldn’t. _Wouldn’t._  

And he’s not a fool, because he knows he could never do this shit with Gavin’s warm and sanguine company pressed against his side, or with Geoff’s furtive, confounded stare, because everything had to be _for_ something, and _this_ was nonsense. He’d never feel comfortable enough in his own skin to nestle in the dirt under a rocky overhang and pepper new chest cavities into civilians with the likes of Jack and her inability to encourage useless pastimes, or with Ryan, who’s idea of fun didn’t require him to leave his apartment for longer than it took to grab take away. And this shit -- the bodies strewn across the highway like they’d torn the windpipe from the city just to watch what came out -- it was too horrible of a thing to do alone, with only his debilitating thoughts to define him.

Because... fuck.

Ray’s not wrong. He’s not wrong about any of it. And as they slide back into the car together, with Ray’s serene smile etching out a place in the darkness where Michael doesn’t feel so god-fucking-awful, he can’t decide which tampered emotion that he’s so unintentionally tied to Ray has him feeling backed into a corner -- terror, or appreciation.

 

///

 

Bits of plaster are raining down on their shoulders, agitating Michael’s skin as he rubs it furiously from his face.

“Goddamn shit on my _dick_ ,” he curses, running a hand frantically through his hair as he attempts to shake off the debris. The wall behind them is littered with bullet holes, small bits of muffled shouts leaking through them, hardly distinguishable.

“Shout out to Head and Shoulders,” Ray mumbles, his eyes keen but playful, and Michael _hates_ how okay he’s become with it after all these months.

“Shout out to your ass,” Michael spits back, sinking lower as another hail of bullets pierce through the wall above them. When Ray glances at him, bewildered, Michael clarifies, “And all the skin they’ll have to peel from it to graft your face back together if you don’t shut the _fuck_ up!”

Ray shrugs, amused. “That’s a bit of a stretch.”

“Said your mom.”

Their earpieces cackle with static, and Ramsey’s voice effectively ends the beginnings of their bickering.

“Cool it, kids. You’ve got five guys out there with MP5s, and they want blood. Focus, get the job done, or I swear to god I’ll put a hit out on both of you just to get my goddamn point across.”

Michael locks eyes with Ray, something that has become as frequent as it is startling, and decisions are made with the reflexes of partners that have been stapled together through decades of combat, rather than months. Michael moves right, drawing attention with a slew of racial derogatories that would make his mother weep, were she alive. He fires without preamble, slicing a zipper through the first guy’s neck to wrangle their attention while Ray moves behind them, quiet and focused, his shit Vans stepping across broken glass like the only weight inside of him was the lingering madness that prevailed during a firefight.

Sixteen minutes later, five men are dead, and Michael has his fist curled at his side. Ray is stepping on fingers as he maneuvers around the bodies that have been artfully arranged into a large phallic figure, splashing generous amounts of kerosene across the dead. He’s humming Smash Mouth under his breath, the corners of his mouth twitching, begging to be allowed a small, feral grin, and Michael feels his nerves ship wildfire across his skin.

He waits until the match has been dropped and the world lights up around them before he slams his fist across Ray’s cheekbone.

Ray isn’t skilled in terms of hand to hand combat, but what he lacks in power he makes up with carnal finesse and unbridled enthusiasm. And when he rights himself, he grins, shooting Michael the most approving, shit-eating endorsement he can muster through his crazed focus for carnage. The fire that burns around them pales in comparison to the engulfing heat locked deep within Ray’s expression, the flames of passion and torment in his eyes.

“Come on, Jones. Make it hurt this time.”

“You could’ve got me _killed_ ,” Michael spits, but it only serves to make Ray’s grin split wider, and Michael tries desperately to ignore how inviting that chaos is. How he wants to sink into it and ignore the humanizing burden of explaining himself beforehand. “That shot came so close to my face I could feel the fucking _air_ move!”

“What’s the matter? You don’t trust me?”

Michael snarls in frustration, because it’s a loaded question and Ray plays with those as easily as he plays with knives in interrogations. He knows full well what Michael trusts, and Ray loves watching Michael place ‘Ray’s whims’ at the top of that list, however much Michael fucking _hates_ doing it.

“I trust you to get what you want,” Michael cuts back, but it doesn’t hit as hard as he wants, doesn’t pierce with the same insouciance that Ray can wind around his words until they’re barbed and damaging.

Ray stares him down, expression half hidden behind the shadow of that fucking hoodie as he smirks. “And what do I want, buddy?”

The heat that pools in Michael’s stomach enrages him even more, and the smoke is starting to sting his eyes. “Hit me back, fucker.”

Ray feigns mulling it over, shouldering his rifle. “Mm. Wrong.”

Michael is ready to take another swing, ready to let his fist study whatever part of Ray he could reach until he could _finally_ find a way to tear whatever human emotions were left in the dispassionate husk that stands before him.

His earpiece statics. His fist unclenches.

“Save it, ladies. I can see the smoke from here, so get your asses out before you burn to death or attract anymore fucking attention. I’m not dropping another four mil in bail money just so you two can have your little pissing match,” Ramsey’s voice cracks through the steadily growing haze around them. “Either fuck and get it over with, or keep it out of work.”

Michael is already turning to leave, because _fuck_ this place and _fuck_ Ray, but as he crunches over broken glass and asphalt, a rough hand on his shoulder knocks him into the wall and Ray is on him, hand gripping Michael’s hip _hard_ like this is some kind of fucking game _,_ and he’s lost count of how many times Ray’s gotten the upperhand just by taking advantage of Michael’s instinctual self-preservation skills.

“I’m down for option one,” Ray smiles devilishly, and Michael can feel everywhere they’re connected by a white-hot sensation that burns heavier than the growing fire around them. Smoke is starting to hang heavy, watering their eyes as the the smell of smoldering flesh rips through the air, and for a wild moment, Michael can’t tell the difference between their burning bodies and his.

He shoves, and when Ray goes willingly, Michael curses himself for not pushing harder, for not matching Ray’s indifference with his own debilitating weakness. He struggles to find his way out of the warehouse through the waves of smoke, and when he finally locates the door and emerges into sunlight, the fresh air hits him like a brick, clearing the ash from lungs as he coughs heavily against the wall.

His eyesight is bordering on a full white-out, and it fluctuates the passage of time until the moments between the burst of sunlight and Ray laughing next to him are all but meaningless lapses of clarity.

“Fuck you,” Michael curses at the presence next to him, spitting out the taste of death from his mouth as his lungs and throat seize in protest. “Why can’t you take a single fucking thing seriously?”

Ray is grinning, the fine layer of ash adding a heavier depth to the madness that swirls between them. Their chests are heaving with exertion, sweat matting their hair and leaving streaks through the dark markings across their cheeks, but Ray still finds the energy to reach out and hook his fingers into Michael’s belt-loop, urging him closer with a flurry of movement. It’s a possessive display, and Ray’s voice is an octave too deep for Michael to even consider hitting him again -- it’d only exacerbate the problem.

“C’mon, man. I take you _very_ seriously.”

There’s an inflection to his discord, each word tilted with the uneasy grace of Ray’s smile. It’s a tease. An invitation. An admittance of nothing Ray doesn’t already wear on his sleeve. It’s a million things that Michael has absolutely _zero_ fucking time for, and he jerks his body away with enough force to (hopefully) defer anymore ill-advised bids for contact on Ray’s part.

“You can take getting a new ride seriously, shit-for-brains.”

“Oh, really? It’s like that--?”

But Michael’s turned away, away from Ray’s tittering, away from whatever creature Ray turns into when the notion of carnage unravels his tongue, and the loose-fingered grip he retains on Michael’s gut starts clenching _hard_ in all the wrong, unexpectedly _right_ ways.

He clambers into his car and curses, hears the leather of the wheel twist underneath his aching fingers. His situational reactions are churring sickeningly with the smell of burning flesh and unspeakable desire for _more._ More of anything, just to satiate the craving for the undefinable. He wants to drive. He wants to slam his foot against the pedal and crash his fucking car into the wall of the construction site just across the street until the only thing he’d be able to feel anymore is the final throbs of his dying pulse. Maybe then he could get some fucking peace.

He waits anyway though. Ray is smart enough to sense the animosity, and stays quiet on the drive back, having the good grace to hide his smile behind his fingers lest Michael turns the steering wheel just enough to kill them both without sparing the afterthought.

They both know Michael’s never waited on anything in his goddamned miserable life. They don’t talk about why that’s changed.

///

 

Michael’s penthouse is littered with plastic wrappings and paper warranties, courtesy of the new furniture he’d hastily ordered. He and Jack had shoved the previous couch over the railing of the balcony after Gavin had stained it with streaks of blood, babbling about evidentiary trials and the millions of dollars of meth he’d sniffed out before inciting a shootout, like an addiction-riddled dog hindered with the mind of an affluent genius.

The penthouse is Michael’s now, courtesy of Jack’s keen intuition and (mostly) her deep pockets, both of which recognize Michael’s need for a halfway house -- one that would let him linger in the crew’s presence without making any _real_ commitment. Exactly how he liked things. His old place had been abandoned, along with the treasure-trove of domesticity he’d kept on the shelves like the world’s worst poorly-guarded secret.

His Talia, he thinks, and hates himself a little bit for it.

The couch they tipped over the balcony had been hauled away eventually, because everything in this city was free if you wanted it enough.

Geoff is already in Michael’s kitchen, a glass of bourbon in his battle-tested fingers, scrolling through images on a tablet that’s as expendable as any other tech they’ve bought, stolen, and then inevitably wrecked. The clatter from the job has died down, leaving Geoff to merely nod at their arrival, keen eyes mulling them over to seek out whatever answers Michael would stubbornly refuse to give him.

“Well done, boys. Herbert is picking up the load now, free of Vago interference, and the money should hit your accounts within the hour.”

Michael nods his understanding, and Ray remains silent, money having no discernible effect on a boy who survives solely off of carnage and New York style pizza. Geoff lowers his calculating eyes slowly, placated, but not entirely pleased with the tension that continuously swarms between his two best gunmen.

Michael half-wishes he could explain it.

He half-wishes he could understand it.

Because in the six months since Michael had ingrained himself into this crew, Ray has been the only member that remains both an open book, and an elusive mystery. Michael _knows_ him, he can accurately predict which side-arm Ray will select for which job, he knows the way Ray’s lips move as he counts the shots silently in the middle of a firefight, his eyes closed behind those cheap, black-rimmed glasses. He _knows_ where Ray hides his DS, content to linger on Michael’s couch until the remainder of the crew have headed home, all too-aware that Michael won’t comment on it.

Michael quickly learns that Ray would sooner eat the barrel of Michael’s gun than be forced to do anything that didn’t appeal to him, like answering Michael’s scathing, unvoiced questions.

The crew leaves, as they always do, and Ray stays. He flits off to Jack’s (Michael’s) shower and returns in a new hoodie, slinks into the new couch with his DS, and life goes on. Michael showers, kicks Ray’s feet out of the way, and promptly gets his ass creamed in Battlefield.

“Ironic,” Ray comments mildly twenty minutes later as Michael snarls at his screen.

Michael shoots him a dirty look, but Ray hasn’t raised his eyes from where his fingers are tapping annoying little rhythms against the pink buttons.

“Can’t be the best in both worlds, cocksucker.”

Ray smiles, but it’s slightly lopsided, likely to due to the puff of bruised skin on the edge of his cheekbone. There’s a sick swoop of… _something_ in Michael’s gut whenever he catches a look of the damage he’s done to Ray’s face, but it isn’t regret. Regret, he could probably handle. This is something else entirely.

Narvaez is untouchable. He’s a tactical genius wrapped sloppily in the body of a heavily damaged stereotype. When the rest of them are tending to knife wounds and nursing the bruises of bullets into vests, Ray is unscathed, having dodged injury and combat encounters as easily as he melts that wild smile across his face.

No one puts their hands on Ray unless he wants them to.

Michael shoves the thought into a coffin and nails it shut. Buries it.

“Bet,” Ray challenges lightly, clicking his DS shut with a snap and holding out his hand for Michael’s controller with the smooth, delicate fingers that belie his profession.

Michael hands it over roughly, trying to channel his frustration onto the physical plane, since Ray easily swallows Michael’s angry words and inputs them back like he was programmed to combat every single defensive mechanism Michael has been able to perfect. The corners of Ray’s mouth twitch, astoundingly pleased with himself.

Ray proves his point within minutes, racking up points and victories as though it were second nature, and Michael doesn’t miss the way Ray casually boasts about it, keeping his body slack and relaxed to heckle Michael’s stiff posture. He’s hardly trying, and Michael is fine-tuned to understand the subtle showmanship Ray thrives on displaying for him. It irks at him. No one can bring down Michael’s walls with a well-timed word-play or punch to the gut, but Ray has perfected those small hits, the ones that weaken his stability and pave the way for an eventual teetering collapse.

He opens his mouth to speak, tension radiating through him as he thinks about how _strained_ they are, how fully he trusts this man to keep him alive out of sheer convenience. Out of a fucking whim.

But Ray interrupts him.

“I don’t miss.”

His eyes flash towards Michael’s, his attention refocused while the game sifts through people in the lobby. Both of them are still frazzled, caught up in the adrenaline of a firefight and misplacing their energy until Ray is drained of the natural high and Michael is overwhelmed.

Michael has made himself vulnerable again, his mind flashing back to the warehouse, his knife buried to the hilt inside of a Vago’s neck as he looked up to see Ray, pistol aimed too close for comfort, and all Michael could think was--

_This is it._

And he hadn’t been surprised.

But the bullet whizzed by him, taking both the life of the Vago behind him as well as Michael’s expectations and splaying them across the dusty, bloody concrete. Michael breathed, and Ray had grinned knowingly.

He swallows heavily at the reminder.  

“But you will. One day.”

He doesn’t mean to make it sound so metaphorical, but Ray is watching him with something akin to interest rather than understanding, and Michael is internally begging to know how his worries have been so lost in translation.

“Maybe,” Ray replies, and the attitude shifts, that fleeting moment of affinity gone. “But I’d rather kill you myself than let someone else do it.”

Ray’s smiling as he says it, searching Michael’s face to watch the play of emotions, like the man could replace what he lost by wrenching it from someone else. But the worst part of it, far worse than knowing Ray would absolutely kill him if the inclination struck him, was the plain, self-assured admittance that no one else would _ever_ take that claim from him.

He watches Ray run his tongue idly over the cut in his lip and something stirs inside of him, a blaring moment of pride that surfaces alongside that coffin he’s so sure he nailed shut.

 

///

 

Michael’s left to wallow in Jack’s chopper, his leg bandaged and weak, unable to support the weight of his body. He’s made a pretty decent pilot during his injury, and Jack’s enjoyed the excuse to test out her new MK12, but he’s filled with a bitter resentment as he watches his crew file out of the chopper and flit out to their positions with laughter on their lips.

Ray jumps out last as the chopper blades wind down, and Michael kicks the door open irritably, cursing his last job and the dead son of bitch that had managed to drive a bullet through the tender muscle of his calf.

“Cheer up,” Ray chastises, “Getaway driver is a good look for you.”

“Shut the fuck up, Ray,” Michael snaps, and he’s lost count of how pivotal that phrase has become in his personal lexicon. Then, when Ray only proceeds to watch him with poorly disguised amusement, upending a bag of gushers into his waiting mouth, Michael sighs wearily. “Bank jobs are my favorite.”

Ray huffs a laugh. “Everything is your favorite when you’re missing out on it.”

“Must be why I’m so sick of seeing you,” Michael snaps back, but Ray remains unfazed, his cheek puffed out on one side as he chews through a mountain of gushers approximately seven minutes before he’s due to blow out the back of a security guard’s skull.

“Don’t be bitchy,” Ray starts, and hops up to lean over Michael, the rifle strapped to his back shifting just enough that the sun catches across the pink glaze. Ray nicks another bag of gushers from the co-pilot seat, crowding Michael’s personal space, and hovers, smile widening.

Michael can feel the shift just a moment before it happens. When Ray’s casual acceptance becomes reckless aplomb, and those brown eyes light up with the fire that never seems truly dormant. Michael meets him head-on, stubbornly refusing to back down as Ray locks in his expression, nothing but static tension in the minuscule distance between them.

“Want me to bring you back something?” Ray smirks, and he’s close enough that Michael can smell the gun oil that still lingers on his skin, the heavy hint of weed that clings to that garish purple hoodie.

He can still see the fading purple mark on Ray’s neck, where Michael had bodily thrown him against the wall the last time he’d tried to be smart about Michael’s out-of-commission status.

“Yeah,” Michael growls, and he swears to _god_ he can see Ray tilt his head just enough to let that bruise announce itself more freely to the world around them. Like it was _intentional._ A goddamn badge of pride. Michael’s fingers tighten into fists and relax, some phantom urge pulling at his resolve. “Surprise me.”

Ray’s eyes flare with intrigue and the spike in heat is tangible as the atmosphere in the open-air chopper becomes heavy and dense. Ray leans forward, so very close to testing the waters of how far he can stretch out the moment, how close he can get to breaking their fragile solid ground, and Michael’s never been this close to another human being that he wasn’t killing or fucking.

His eyes refuse to leave Ray’s, despite how desperately they beg him to rove over the opportunity that’s being laid out before him, testing his resolve. Dark brown eyes are watching him, pupils dilated in an uncharacteristic response that even Ray can’t bullshit his way out of, and in the second it takes for him to understand what that _means,_ Ray is all he can breathe, lighting up his nerves from the inside out as every neuron fires and crackles. His fingers twitch, torn between pulling Ray down to kiss the smirk off his face until he’s utterly _wrecked,_ or decking him right in the mouth to further mark his territory.

“Don’t I always?” Ray breathes, cocky and confident in all the ways he deserves, breaking the moment apart with the same delicate flair as a sledgehammer would offer a mirror. Then, he’s gone, stepping out of the chopper gracefully and tracking down the hill towards the carefully concealed sniper’s nest they’ve been meticulously mapping out for the better half of a week.

Michael lets his sigh become a groan of frustration as he switches on his radio and watches Ray’s retreating back, bitterly willing the hard press against his jeans to vanish until he can figure out exactly what part of that exchange had left him breathless and aching.

 

///

 

It’s two in the morning when he removes himself from the tomb the heist room has become, figuratively (bordering on literally). The penthouse is quiet, save for the crackling of a fireplace that never burns out, and the soft sounds of gunfire peppering outwards from the soundbar underneath the television.

Ray is still up, fingers tapping a hypnotic rhythm against the controller, oblivious to the beauty of the night sky that blares in at him from every open window, begging for his consideration. Michael can’t judge him for his negligence of the world. Not really. Hell, he’d just spent the past six hours holed up in a room the size of a matchbox to further mitigate his dissociation, so he doesn’t have much of a right to judge another man’s priorities.

He announces himself by fumbling with the belt on his jeans, pulling the damn thing loose enough to kick himself out of his pants and collapse across the empty couch. He smacks his hand across the upper cushions for a moment before finding the soft, thick, tiger blanket that Gavin had bought him off of a street vendor and pulling it down across himself.

Ray scoffs. “You know, there’s a bed downstairs,” he teases, just soft enough to avoid disturbing the ritualistic peace they carry between them.

“Then why aren’t you in it?” Michael quips back, just as easily. His eyes feel heavy, but he’s willing them open, trying to stay awake long enough to watch Ray finish the current chapter of his campaign.

He doesn’t know exactly when they started co-existing. When the biting fear had been replaced by tentative respect, their own special brands of isolationism winning out over combative tendencies to form a shaky, but stable, alliance.

He hadn’t wanted a roommate, but Ray _had_ been here first, needing a safe harbor far more than he needed a home. Michael knows their affinity is based off a mutual disregard for one another’s comfort levels, an innately passive decision to forgo the daunting task of trying to impress each other in ways they would for a guest. In their disregard for one another’s comfort, they had found an unexpected peace.

“These are eight thousand dollar couches, Jones. You’ll never be able to convince me not to sleep on an eight thousand dollar couch.”

Michael snorts. “Right. Because I’m sure after buying the couch, they said, ‘oops, we’re out of money!’ and just threw a stained mattress down on the fucking floor.”

More rhythmic tapping, lulling Michael to sleep. He can’t remember when it stopped being annoying. It’s almost hard to sleep without it, when Ray’s out, and he spends those night skewed and out of place.

“See, that’s what I had thought too--”

“--seriously?--”

“--But really, the bed is only six grand. I did my research. Statistically, the couch _has_ to be comfier.”

“I don’t think you know how statistics work. Or what they mean. Actually, gonna go out on a limb here -- can you even spell it?”

Michael tears his heavy eyes away from the television long enough to glance at Ray on the opposite couch. The edges of his mouth are quirked in amusement, highlighted by the moonlight streaming in from floor-to-ceiling windows. The peacefulness of the night this high above the gutters tries to tear the _wild_ from Ray’s features, allowing those small, sacred doses of mortality to break through. Michael feels that familiar curl in his gut, the static in his nerves.  

“Anyone ever tell you that you get kind of bitchy when you’re tired?” Ray asks, and Michael snuggles further into his blankets at the reminder.

“Says the guy who determines where he’ll sleep by the _cost of the furniture._ ”

Ray shrugs. “I know what I like. We all have our weaknesses, right?”

And Michael wants to retort, wants to keep the fake argument going, a mockery of the bitter resentment they used to so easily share, but his body has been operating for thirty two solid hours, and it’s no longer his choice. His eyes droop closed, the tapping of buttons the same lullaby he’s gotten almost every night for the past eight months.

When he wakes, the sun is high, and Ray’s form is sleeping on the couch across from him, exposed and unguarded in a way Michael is convinced is just as rare as earning Ray’s favor long enough to see it.

The arrangement stays after that, and everytime Michael wakes to the undeniable testament of Ray’s trust, he begins to slowly evaluate just what _weakness_ Ray might have met.

 

///

 

Despite his initial grumblings of codependency, Geoff’s crew can hold their own (albeit, in a very dangerous, theatrical manner), and Michael has yet to feel the cold clench of terror brought on by nearly losing an affiliate.

Gavin, for all his clumsy pitfalls, has somehow polarized his body to attract a seemingly endless supply of luck, but Michael’s eyesight still shifts to him occasionally, a fiery urge to protect the one member who can’t seem to fend for himself outside of an accidental discharge.

So as usual, Michael spends his time focusing on all the wrong things, and Ray blindsides him with little to no effort.

“Guys, look at this fucking cop, he’s on a goddamn...scooter, or something. Fucking scooter patrol over here.”

Gavin snorts over the line, and Michael grins, trying to force his concentration on the small group of Vagos he’s supposed to be tailing and _not_ on the slightly staticy sound of Ray’s quips.

“Christ, Ray…”

“You thought Moto Cop was scary,” Ray continues, his voice hushed from his position, “You haven’t met the Scooter Sergeant!”

Michael can’t help the laughter that chokes its way out of his throat, tears stinging his eyes as he bites his lip hard enough to avoid another unprompted outburst. The Vagos have stopped, looking around curiously with their fingers skimming the pistols in their waistbands, but seem to ultimately decide to ignore the sound.

“Ray,” Gavin chastises over the line, though his voice is still tittering through the tendrils of humor. “Pay attention, you dolt. Cops are bloody everywhere in that area.”

There’s a lengthy pause, a scuffle on Ray’s end of the radio, and--

“Funny you should say that,” Ray huffs into his line, and the bracing edge of dark humor instantly piques Michael’s attention. “Might need some backup.”

Michael feels the shots reverberating his earpiece just as he hears them in the short distance to the east, where Ray is performing recon for a possible dirty cop. Michael counts three quick rounds, followed by a tentative fourth shot, which he knows could mean several things:

One, the shooter is nervously pursuing Ray, a lack of trigger discipline sending off a wild, fourth round at nothing but ghosts.

Two, They’d nailed Ray in the first hits, and the final one was an ending blow to the head, a district-wide recommendation for any high-profile targets.

Third, those shots could have come from Ray himself, but Michael finds that option highly unlikely. Ray is tactful, and the gunfire was too sporadic and frenzied to give any weight to the idea.

Regardless, Ray is in LSPD territory, and the man can only carry so much 7.62 on him before he starts make a spectacle of himself.

“X-Ray?”

Gavin’s breathing is pinched through the comm, worried and careful and all of the things their crew is decidedly _not_ fond of openly practicing. Michael’s fingers tighten against the grip of his pistol, listening closely, feeling the bowstrings of his muscles contract as time passes and no confirmation of safety is obtained.

“Fuck,” Geoff curses into the line. “Jack, Ryan--”

Geoff’s instructions are cut off as semi-automatic gunfire echoes in the east -- single shot, a precision instrument, definitely Ray. It’s choppy and thick, far more frantic than Ray would ever willingly handle in a situation, and Michael feels that chill of panic slide down his spine to pool in his gut. The Vagos in front of him are pointing, degrading comments sliding from their mouths at the poor cocksucker the cops have pinned down, and before Michael is even aware of moving, he’s put a bullet through the skull of the middle man. The remaining two startle and jump back, hands moving to shield their eyes, but Michael can’t be bothered to drag out their deaths, not when something cataclysmic is happening three blocks away that’s turning his nerves into a shaky bundle of sparklers, fizzing with anticipation and _fear_.

“I got it,” he hears himself snarling into the comm, and no one questions him. Even Geoff, who is loathe to have his orders swept out beneath him, doesn't even bristle at the insubordination (which, really, had to be a prerequisite to taking Michael on at _all)_. He supposes that means something, but doesn’t dwell on it.

In fact, everyone remains uncommonly quiet as Michael litters the comm with a steady litany of profanity, his words likely warbled and whipped as he tears down the street towards the gunfire. The only thing he feels is the air moving around him, cutting a space for him in the atmosphere as he tunes out everything except his destination.

He’s vaguely aware of cursing Ray; grumbled, half-hearted threats of tearing him apart if he’s dead, _murdering_ him if he made Michael run down the middle of Parker street for nothing but a bullet-ridden body, asking Ray if killing the contacts he’d been tailing for the past hour was really worth all this goddamn _trouble._

And still, no one says a word.

Michael’s legs are shaking by the time he stops, and he’d love to blame it on the unprecedented amount of sprinting he’d just forced himself into, but the tremors have extended to his arms, his fingers -- his very insides feel swarmed with a discomfort so pronounced that bile has risen to the bottom of his throat, and swallowing makes his mouth feel like sandpaper.  

The gunfire has stopped, but Michael can see the bodies, free from pedestrian interference as the vicinity has been effectively cleared out by the firefight. The brass intricacies in their uniforms glint against the sun, shimmering red through the specks of blood, allowing Michael to easily count the lifeless forms across the entrance to a parking garage. Eight officers down, and from the distant sound of sirens, that number was likely to grow if he didn’t move away from the scene of the crime.

“Fuck,” he spits, keeping his back close to the wall. “Shit. Ray, where the fuck are you?”

He eyes the garage behind him suspiciously, glowering at it with the faint hope that it’ll reveal all its secrets, before turning down towards the broken and stuccoed apartments across the street. If Ray is alive, he’d be moving.

_Please, god, let him be moving._

Michael finds him three minutes later, collapsed in a weed garden alongside the inner courtyard in the one of the shittiest residential complexes Los Santos can offer. It’s mostly hidden from the cops that are currently parking their patrol cars in privacy circle around their dead, but Michael can't give less of a shit about it, because Ray isn’t moving. He’s slumped on his side, face hidden and body still.

Michael doesn’t know if his legs collapse beneath him, or if he willed himself down on his own, but his knees suddenly ache from concrete contact and he’s only feet away from that stupid fucking garish purple hoodie. His hands are trembling as they move, and he’s lost, back inside that dissociation that always hovers just outside of the boundaries of his self-control. The clothed expanse of Ray’s back signifies more than it should, and his world tilts in disbelief.

For a wild, fleeting moment, he wants to run.

But the moment passes when he places a nervous hand on Ray’s shoulder, only to have it lightly batted away with curved, tan fingers.

“Stop it. I’m sore.”

Michael’s heart stops, then bursts within his chest, and the world is suddenly so goddamn _vibrant._ His hands shake as he places them back on his knees and he slumps down on his ass, unable to hold up his own weight as his thoughts drown in the dizzying tide of relief that sweeps over him.

“You fucking _cunt_ bag. Why didn’t you answer your fucking comm?”

Ray moves just enough to peer at him through the shadow of his hood, before slumping his face back down into the dirt. “Oh, right. Smashed it on accident. Shame, because I probably missed you totally lamenting my death, right? Also, few of my ribs are broken from when I fell, so….uh. Carry me?”

Michael is grinning into his hands, because he _hates_ this piece of shit. He _does._

And yet.

“You nearly died for a Sergeant Scooter joke.”

He can’t see Ray’s expression, but the smile in his words is hard to miss.

“Worth it.”

Michael sure as fuck doesn’t carry him, but he may shoulder more of Ray’s weight than is entirely necessary as they hobble further into the complex, finding a derelict, shadowy spot to hunker down at while Michael radios in for transportation.  

Michael doesn’t dwell on Ray’s close call, because that’s a dangerous line of thinking in their occupation. He doesn’t dwell on the instantaneous reaction, the risky maneuvers he’d taken to provide backup, the caution he’d thrown into the fucking wind -- no. And he really doesn’t dwell on the emptiness that had gripped him at the blunt, crippling knowledge that Ray had been taken from this world, and how everything inside of him had ripped itself apart in sheer disbelief and agony.

He looks at Ray, who’s hissing in annoyance as he pulls his shirt up to inspect the blossoming of bruises across his ribs, and his heart beats wildly for the _everything_ he almost lost. The bouts of anger, that initial searing hatred, the mysterious curiosity, the raw snatches of affection….the goddamn ability to _feel_ again.

In that moment, if Ray’s body had turned out to be nothing but a physical memory, he would have run from the crew, for they’d have nothing left to give him. He tries to bury the thought, just as he’s done so many times before, but finds there is very little room left in that coffin.

 

///

 

Michael likes to consider himself a patient guy. So when he’s posted on the rooftop of a ten story bank building, his insides coiled and sparking with some unnamed urge to _act,_ he’s the first to admit he’s been bled a little far out of his comfort zone. And the wind chill up this high isn’t helping his mood.

He’s played lookout before, that in itself isn’t unusual, but Geoff and Jack have been in discussions with the owner of a local brewery for the better part of an hour, and he’s _antsy._ No one in the fucking world is going to try and take Ramsey and Patillo out during a business transaction, and their presence here is merely window dressing. It bugs the fuck out of him to be utilized as an ornate cake topper to another deal borne of Ramsey’s whims.

Ray’s calm, collected presence lying prone next to him isn’t helping, either; his easy posture is a mockery of Michael’s clenched muscles, and even though he knows it’s not intentional, he feels challenged by Ray’s totalitarian rule of those tan fingers and dexterous muscles. How the fuck does he keep that shit under control?

He averts his gaze from the brewery’s doorway and scans the city, watching the dull lives of dull people who he suddenly _craves_ to be, just so he could focus on something that isn’t the sound of blood pulsing in his ears. The sun is high and bright, trying its damndest to tear through the March chill, and the edges of their shirts are caught in the breeze that blesses and torments those who brave being one hundred and ten feet above the busy street below.

He shifts for the twentieth time in an hour on the cold metal overhang beneath them, feeling Ray’s warmth next to him like a fucking furnace.

“Knock it off,” Ray mumbles to him, chin planted on his hand as he stares down at the street in patient boredom. His Mk 14 is set up lovingly on his other side, untouched and likely useless today -- a prize box toy you never had enough tickets to take off the shelf. A goddamn shame.

Michael smiles to himself. It must be tearing Ray to fucking _pieces._

“Bet you can’t hit that bum in that underpass,” Michael declares conversationally, gesturing towards the bridge far past their target area where a lone man sits under the safety of the shadows, fidgeting with something in his grimy fingers. It’s a hard mark, with the ocean wind cresting sporadically, and the bum’s drug habit leaving him twitchy -- paranoid enough to be pacing across the graffitied stone.

Ray sighs, but Michael watches as his eyes move in interest, mapping out the target, unknowingly demonstrating just how desperate he is to _do_ something, despite how well he hides it.

“Fuck off. We’re working.”

“Gav and Ryan got it,” Michael argues, and it’s no stretch of the truth. Two pairs of eyes are already on ground level, held up in a backup car and operating as Geoff and Jack’s primary line of defense.

Ray is hesitant to respond, which Michael reads as being hesitant to say _no,_ and it’s all he needs before he’s pulling the radio from his belt. Ray doesn’t move to stop him, and Michael grins to himself as he clicks on the transmitter.

“Ryan, Gavvers, you got it covered down there?”

The radio cackles to life, and Ryan’s dry drawl answers him.

“If by ‘it’ you mean the closed door, and ‘got’ you mean staring, then yeah, we’ve got it fucking covered.”

Michael huffs a laugh. “Geoff had better give us the run of that fucking place tonight for this bullshit. Anyway, we’re gonna do a few field tests up here. Be a shame to drag the Mk up this far and not get a shot in, right?”

“Copy,” Ryan confirms, and his voice is nearly dripping in petulant jealousy. “Let me know when you’re back.”

When Michael shifts his eager eyes back onto Ray, the man seems burdened with his own annoyance, as though he’s _loathe_ to let something as trivial as peer pressure unbalance his dedication.

“Come on,” Michael urges softly, spicing up his usual scathing rapport with Ray to something a little tender around the edges, just in an attempt to ease the crippling monotony. “Give me a show, man.”

Miraculously, it _works._ Ray chews the inside of his lip, his eyesight set on something distant as he works through whether he wants to be coerced or not. But something about Michael’s words must have hit heavy with him, because he exhales softly (like he’s so _beyond_ this), and inches closer to his scope.

It’s the first time Ray’s ignored his better judgement and actively yielded to Michael’s whims, and something monumental is stirring in Michael’s gut. He presses his luck, mildly dazed to have Ray bending so unusually to his whining, and lowers his voice.

“Good boy.”

Ray’s finger slips from the trigger, and Michael’s eyes zero in on it like a predator scouting for a meal. Curiosity is shooting up his spine as Ray stares decidedly forward, refusing to comment, and for the first time in their oscillating race to outdo each other, he feels like he’s seen Ray trip, giving him a clear path to finally, _finally,_ be one step ahead.

“Bets on, then,” Michael breathes out, feeling Ray’s warmth next to him like a beacon for every culminated bad decision he’s ever made. “Clean headshot, straight into the wall behind him. You miss, and you clean the entire penthouse tonight. _Including_ the bathroom.”

Ray scoffs, but Michael knows the minute sounds of Ray’s interest, and sure enough, he’s asking, “And if I get him?”

Michael hesitates, the words tipped precariously on the edge of his tongue. To give them life would be exposing the deep seated admission he keeps locked away from even his own consideration. But the air is colder up here, making Ray’s chaotic heat all the more inviting, and he can’t fucking _live_ with being held in this stupid fucking purgatory of _knowing_ without _acting._

He’s never been a particularly secretive person, anyway.

“I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

Ray doesn’t respond, but the edges of his mouth quirk in a silent agreement, and Michael can feel his own pulse jumping in his wrist. Unacknowledged then, but definitely not un-reciprocated.

That restlessness is still stirring under Michael’s skin, and he can’t decide if he hates or loves the way it’s knocking past his self preservation instincts and urging him to _dare_ to try. Ray’s distracted, lining up his shot with the rifle perched perfectly on his right side, and Michael doesn’t give himself time to second guess his decision as he places a hand across the warm material that covers Ray’s lower back.

The contact makes Ray jerk wildly, and the response sends a bolt of fear through Michael’s resilient resolve -- maybe he’s read this so fucking wrong. But slowly, the taut muscles in Ray’s back unwind, relaxing against the feel of Michael’s curious request, until Michael is confident enough in Ray’s acceptance to run his thumb across the exposed inch of skin above his jeans, craving more. Ray’s skin is uncharted territory, a natural reticence that represents the only aspect of himself Ray truly guards, and Michael wants that metaphorical trophy  _way_ more than he wants to avoid a fight.

He allows himself the luxury of trailing his fingers across the stretch of heated skin under the guise of friendly reassurance. He’s pushing his luck and he knows it, but Ray has no reaction other than the stone-still posture of his body, like an animal torn between deciding his fight or flight response. Michael’s confidence grows, and he feels the wave of a powertrip swell inside of him.

When the pads of his fingers slide underneath the hem of Ray’s shirt, just enough to fully feel that hot expanse of skin he’s sacredly hidden, Michael watches as a full body shiver tears through Ray. Two seconds of a sear and slide is all it takes for Michael to become wholly addicted to the way Ray’s muscles clench and loosen beneath him, a foreign, alien movement in a man who exists solely within the realm of reactionary detachment.

He can’t help the slide of his thumb across the small of Ray’s back, eliciting goosebumps on his own skin as Ray shifts, pressing back into the touch like he’s been starved for it. Michael bites his bottom lip nervously as he realizes his own mistake, how he’ll never be satisfied with this meager offering, and slips his hand completely under Ray’s shirt to splay against his back. Ray arches slightly against him in surprise, still unmoving behind his scope.

Emboldened by Ray’s acquiescent nature, he takes a chance and rakes his nails across the warm flesh beneath his fingers, just hard enough to leave soft red trails of damage. He expects a twist and turn, a maneuver for Ray to better align his fist to Michael’s face. What he gets instead catches his breath in his throat, his nerves skidding and sputtering into a hard tense as Ray exhales quickly -- just enough for Michael to understand that immediate, onslaught of interest. Just enough weakness for his hardening dick to twitch eagerly in his pants.

In that moment, Michael wants to _wreck_ him.

But before he can plot his next move, the discharge of the rifle surprises him, making his fingers clench into Ray’s skin, jolting his body ever closer. He looks across the highway to watch, distantly, as the bum tweaking in the underpass slowly sways to his right and falls, leaving a streak of blood across the wall from where Ray’s bullet had torn a hole through his skull.

“You motherfucker,” Michael mumbles respectfully with a grin, hand still firmly placed against the warmth of Ray’s back.

Ray turns, and there’s something wild in his expression, ghosted by the dark bleed of pupil into iris. “I win,” he mumbles, before fisting Michael’s jacket and slotting his mouth against Michael’s.

Ray kisses much like he fires a rifle -- studiously, passionately, and with a pronounced air of smug elitism. Michael barely has a moment to react before Ray is teasing his bottom lip with his tongue, urging him open, and the cold air that breezes past them only serves to make the kiss that much hotter. The request feels more like a chastising reminder than it does permission, and Michael very quickly realizes he was a fool for thinking he ever had the upper hand. His muscles loosen as he complies, abandoning any notion of dominance as Ray deepens their connection, biting just hard enough to rip a pleasurable noise of surprise from Michael’s throat.

They’re pressed too close, Ray’s thigh working its way between Michaels as his free hand trails down to Michael’s waistband, slipping two confident fingers into the gap of denim and skin. Michael’s lost in the novelty of feeling Ray’s shoulder blades beneath his hands, the arch of his spine as he responds so beautifully, like he’s been aching to feel Michael just as badly as--

“Y’all good? We heard the one shot, and nothing else.”

Michael pulls away from Ray with a strangled curse, reaching out with fumbling fingers to find the god-forsaken radio. Ray ignores his struggle, moving instead to focus his attention on Michael’s neck, leaving a trail of possessive affection down every inch of skin he find. Michael finally grabs the comm, clicking on the transmitter and desperately trying to outwardly ignore Ray’s ministrations while internally begging they’d never end.

“Yeah, we’re good up here,” Michael responds, and clears his throat pointedly. “We’re done. It’s-- that’s all.”

He clicks off the transmitter just in time to avoid subjecting Ryan and Gavin to the hiss of pleasure that slips from his lips. Ray has the palm of his hand pressing into the growing bulge in Michael’s pants, and is kneading him gently, like they’d done this thousands of times before. Like he knows _exactly_ what he’s allowed to do.

“ _Fuck,_ ” Michael curses, thrusting up lightly into the caress. “You’re such a… fuck, knock it off.”

Ray only grins against Michael’s skin.

Ryan’s voice crackled back to life. “You, uh, sure? That was a...weird sentence.”

“Yup,” Michael answers quickly. “Sorry. It’s...cold.”

Ray snorts, and Michael resists the urge to slap him.

“Alright, well just…” A pause, and Michael feels the snap-crack of fear that they’re not quite as hidden as he’d like, but Ryan continues cheerily. “Oh, hey, they’re done. You guys can come down, I guess. Geoff and Jack just walked out, and it all looks good. He’s motioning us inside.”

Michael can hear Gavin’s _shitting Christ, finally,_ and his world tilts at how _normal_ everything seems outside of Ray running his hand up inside of Michael’s shirt.

“We’re on our way,” Michael answers carefully, keeping his voice as dry and aloof as he clicks off the receiver, and is loathe to feel Ray pull up and away from him, as though the thought of work has executive control over Ray’s libido. Ray dusts off his jeans and moves to dismount his rifle, shooting Michael a wicked smile.

“Guess _you’ll_ be cleaning the penthouse then. Bathroom too, right champ?”

“I’m not cleaning up your fucking collection of Taco Bell wrappers. You can go to hell,” Michael curses, following Ray’s lead. They pack up, tear down, and make their exit from the rooftop, smarmy insults flying back and forth like two foreigners in a new land, their language all but a mystery to anyone native enough to hear them.

They don’t mention any of it. Ray looks unbothered, but Michael can still feel the vibration of intensity deep in his bones. How fool he’d been to think that Ray would fall to pieces underneath him, would cater to Michael’s whims without being fully in control of his own intentions. Not for the first time, he feels as though he’d won a prize at the fairgrounds, unaware that the entire game had been rigged from the start, and he’d gotten _exactly_ what he was meant to.

He sleeps in the heist room that night, and Ray doesn’t bother him. He keeps his back pressed close to the desk as his heart pounds with something that skitters the edge of anticipation and fear, but as the hours tick by, it deflates into acceptance. He doesn’t know whether he’s relieved or disappointed, but one singular, simple fact is unavoidable in the jumble of thoughts that pervade the silence: he isn’t in control. He isn’t in control of _anything_ he feels. And that, at least, is familiar territory.

 

///

 

He’s been with the crew awhile now. Close to a year. Long enough that he thinks they might even give a shit if he died.

The moment they do, it still surprises him.

Some dick with a face tattoo is grinning haughtily at him, top of the world, boastful arrogance that always ends up foreshadowing a relatively embarrassing demise. With Michael’s mag on empty and a shabby, wooden wall against his back, he doesn’t seem to be in fortune’s favor. Or luck’s. Or any other mythical force that would have premeditated him into this fucking situation in the first place.

“You’ve killed a lot of my men, Jones,” Tattoo admonishes, accent thick like he’s speaking through a mouthful of cock. “Now, I have to decide what manner to kill you in. To best honor them, you know.”

Michael rolls his eyes, determined to be as uncooperative as possible, even if his pulse is pounding against his throat. “You cared about your men that much in the first place, you wouldn’t have sent them into Fake territory. You signed their death sentences, buddy, I just did the dirty work.”

Tattoo sneers, entirely unamused as he thinks over his next cliche soliloquy, and Michael uses the opportunity to gather his surroundings. A wall behind him and to the left, but a clear alley down his right and a blissfully open road past Face Tattoo and his sweaty, sticky jersey. Four men are posted behind the lumbering idiot in front, eyes on all possible entry-points, effectively record-scratching Michael’s hope for Fake reinforcements. Tactically disadvantageous. Foolhardy. Even in his anger, he can’t hold it against them.

He certainly isn’t worth losing a man over.

“They call you all sorts of names in my part of the city, did you know? Firecracker, _Mogar,_ bunch of stupid little petnames. I wonder what they’ll call you when you’re dead?”

He’s much too close now, Michael can see the stains on his shirt, the sweat beading on his forehead, and he knows what’s coming. But hell, he’ll die as he lived -- unapologetically. He’s not afraid of it.

“You know what they call you, in my part of the city?” Michael asks, and he defiantly _doesn’t_ eye the serrated blade that’s gleaming in Tattoo’s hand. “Oh right. Nothing. Because no one knows who the fuck you are, dickhead.”

A flash of anger, spiteful rage. Michael sees the words _They soon will_ pass from the man’s lips in slow motion, movement like ripples on water, and there’s a blinding pain in his shoulder as his skin is split open to allow room for the blade. The misery is exquisite, pounding and sizzling the flesh and nerves that run across the expanse of his arm, flaying him from the inside out. It’s only when his body is tense, tugged uncomfortably in no particular direction, and movement makes a flare of white-hot agony tear through him does he realize he’s been pinned to the wooden wall behind him.

His free hand goes to grip at the handle, an autopilot maneuver he couldn’t have avoided if he tried, but his angle is off, and his strength is waned through pain. He curses in blinding fury as Tattoos smiles, pressing the barrel of his .45 against the seam in Michael’s jeans. The shot will shatter his pelvis, tear through his dick, and the resulting distress will crumple his legs, until the only thing holding him up will be the knife in his shoulder.

As far as deaths go, this one’s pretty shit.

He hears the rack of a slide and the cock of a striker, a clock _tick!_ closer to his final moments, but someone is shouting -- one of the thugs, aiming high at the rooftops, sputtering out foreign words in a language that means nothing to Michael outside of _alert alert alert._ Tattoos moves the gun, brandishing it against Michael’s skull in an active display of power against whatever enemy lingers just beyond sight.

A clattering in the alley, and four guns sweep right like a swimmer’s acrobatic team. Michael is trying to clear the haziness that threatens to engulf his sight, the pain in his arm a stagnant debilitation, and he’s too woozy from fear and throbbing discomfort to even be surprised when Tattoos jolts next to him. He watches in rapt, confused fascination as muscles seize violently all across the man’s body, filling the space between skin and bone with waves of sporadic reactions of dying nerves. Then, he crumples, revealing the small, gory hole at the top of his dome.

Michael hears the sound of Ray jumping down before he sees him, and the flash of purple might as well be a crusader’s cape for how delicately he takes the eight foot drop, landing gingerly next to the man he’d just recently lodged a bullet into. The soft landing isn’t soft enough though, and the four men hunting for ghosts turn, finding a boy in checkered Vans where their boss used to be.

Ray backs up, positioning his body between Michael and the four barrels, close enough for contact. A human shield. Michael is torn between the infuriating lack of good judgement here, and shock -- because here, right now, is indisputable proof that Ray is putting himself between Michael and what is, essentially, a firing squad.

“Michael,” Ray says sharply, and the clarity breaks through the fog of Michael’s pain. He’s never heard Ray say his name with such intensity before, not outside of a third-person reference, and it hits just the right frequency to shake Michael to his core.

But it’s the only encouragement he needs, and as one of the four men shout something stupid and foreign and likely revenge-oriented, Michael reaches down as best he can and unholsters Ray’s secondary pistol from his thigh, raising it just as Ray raises his.

It takes all of six seconds for the shooting to stop. Six seconds for Michael and Ray to fire in tandem, two marks for each of them, until all four targets are down. Six seconds for Michael to hear the wood splintering behind him from stray bullets, vibrating through the air with a hiss and sting of aggravated misses. Six seconds to feel Ray’s warmth against him, to feel _safe_ in a way he doesn’t deserve, a way that makes guilt bubble inside of him at the blatant lack of caution.

Six seconds to feel two bullets embed themselves into Ray’s chest with a solid _thwunk, thwunk,_ and time slows _._ It stops. The world becomes a smear of color and buzzing emptiness as Ray stumbles back from the force of the impact, pressing up against Michael’s chest. The movement tweaks the knife in his shoulder and pain blisters through him, but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t _care--_

“Ray! Fuck, shit--!”

Four men fall to the ground, and five guns follow suit. Ray keeps his held tightly in his grip as he stumbles, but Michael lets his drop, free hand flying to steady Ray as he wobbles backwards against Michael’s chest, feet scraping unsteadily against the broken concrete.

“Ray! No, no no no. Come on, man.”

Ray is shaking, but he tries to right himself, holding onto Michael’s arm with a grip so powerful it’s unintentionally radiating his weakness. It’s hard to tell who’s stabilizing the other, and Michael is sure neither of them are really helping, but he _can’t_ let go. He’s looking for blood, for entry wounds, mind furiously trying to remember what he’s supposed to _do--_

“It’s fine,” Ray hisses, eyes scrunched up in pain. “They both hit vest.”

“Did they tear through?” Michael asks, frantic, because there’s _no_ way all of this isn’t the end of the goddamn world.

“No,” Ray breathes out, and Michael can’t stop looking at his face as he turns. He’s never seen Ray take a hit that wasn’t from Michael’s fist, and those strikes were always accompanied with a bloody smirk, a reminder that Ray _wanted_ this, had antagonized Michael up for this exact reaction.

This isn’t like that. Ray might as well have been strapped to a fucking cross.

There are footsteps in the alley as Ray pushes away and stumbles up to the far wall, away from Michael, away from the outlandish fucking decision he had just made. Before Michael can question him, can let his shock turn into righteous anger, he sees Ryan and Geoff tearing through the alley towards them, guns unsheathed like the heroes no one needed.

It’s a blur after that. Ryan comes to a halt in front of him, his finger pressing against the comm in his ear, assuring the crew _We’ve got him. He’s fine. He’s fine._ Ryan’s firm hand is pressing against him, fiercely muttering panicked reassurances as he yanks the blade from his shoulder, ripping a vicious cry from Michael that sounds muted and distorted. The blade falls to the concrete with a ringing bounce. Ryan is wrapping the gaping wound with something, attention concentrated on the damage, but Michael’s vision is swimming, focusing in and out on the scene that’s playing out just behind Ryan’s back.

Ray is pulling off his vest, pain etched upon his face as he lets it slide from his shoulders. He lifts up his shirt to examine the blotches of red and black that are already blossoming across his chest, a brazen piece of abstract art on an otherwise blank canvas. Geoff is furious, spitting anger and astonishment, hands tight in his hair as he assesses the abuse and screams _What happened to the goddamn plan?! What the fuck is wrong with you?!_ And looking torn between embracing Ray and strangling him.

When Ray finally meets his eyes, Michael can see his same emotions mirrored back at him, like some fun house warbled version of a bad joke. Neither one of them have a grasp on their current reality, and their connection is searing and warped, like it had always been there, intangible and dormant, waiting for the moment one of them blew the dust off by advertising a foolhardy, unexplainable dedication.

Michael can’t feel the cloth being pressed into his wound as Ryan courageously tries to stop the blood flow, and Geoff might as well be raging at the goddamn wall. Neither of them are there. Two moments are taking place simultaneously, and Michael is captivated, drowning in the tide of their sudden shared clarity, finally understanding the calamity of their own selfless, out-of-body reactions.  

He’s been violently thrust into something undefinable, and he’s terrified.

 

///

 

Geoff takes Ray home, and no one argues.

No one know what to say.

Even Gavin remains quiet, his eyes sliding from Ray’s retreating back to Michael’s tense and coiled presence. Michael recognizes the look in his eyes, the expression of a man on the outside looking in, trying to understand. He had worn it himself so many months ago, fresh off the chopper and playing the role of a metaphorical cat hiding under the bed while he acclimated to a group of men stupid enough to adopt a stray from the street. He doesn’t know when that changed. He doesn’t know why people are so suddenly looking at him the way he looks at Ray, like they could accept him as a murderous loner looking to get paid, but _substance_ was more than they could handle.

He shivers, and moves away from Gavin’s curiosity, the stem of so many questions he doesn’t have answers to. They leave the penthouse eventually, all too aware they’re bordering the fringes of something they have no involvement in, oil in water, sand over rocks, and Michael is left alone to wallow in the surprising misery of living another day.

Ray returns three hours later, and it’s a testament to how well they’ve become entwined in one another that Michael recognizes the click of the lock as being a single caliber too loud. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he raises himself from the couch like the sound had summoned all the correct muscles in his body.

Ray’s eyes flash to him as he moves gingerly down the staircase, and Michael doesn’t want to think about how sore he must be, taking two bullets at point blank range. He tries to feel sorry, but all he can cluster up in his melting pot of reactionary emotions is anger, simple and well-defined.

“The fuck were you thinking?”

The words are out of his mouth before Ray reaches the bottom step, and he pauses, like a petulant teenager caught sneaking out, blindsided by his over-assertive mother.

Ray’s gaze shifts to the floor, and he ignores Michael’s question in favor of retreating down into the bedroom. Neither of them use the bedroom. The blatant alteration of their tender, unspoken agreement hits Michael like a brick to the chest, symbolic of way more than he wants to give a fucking bed credit for.

“Hey! I’m talking to you!”

He trails after Ray, following the aura of damage and leaving behind the reservation they’ve trekked so far off of. The world is darker on the lower floor, shades half-covering the X-rated nightlife that thrives and bounces twenty-eight floors beneath them. The room is pristine, tight and angular in the absence of human contact, and Michael swallows his unease to snarl at Ray’s turned back.

“You gonna act like you can’t hear me? What the fuck was that today, huh?”

Ray doesn’t turn around. His form seems smaller, closed in on itself in a way that should make him seem weaker, but only serves of amplify the warning in Michael’s gut. The muscles in Ray’s back are too tight, only a snap away from upending the desolate _something_ that plagues the otherwise casual persona.

“I saved your fucking life, how about a thank you?”

The tone is dangerous. Michael curls his arms around himself, ignoring the sting of pain in his shoulder.

“Yeah, and you got lucky, you stupid son of a--”

Ray has turned before Michael can finish his thought, his eyes piercing in the shallow moonlight that forces its way through the window. There’s an unfamiliar expression across his face, hooked around the edges of his usual unhinged characteristics, but Michael can’t recognize it. He only knows the feeling it tears from him -- a twinge of fear, a hefty dose of respect, an enervating anger for the personification of smug elitism, and something else. Something that draws him in with a fevered pitch not unlike a drug. Not unlike a moth to a flame. Not unlike a suicidal man to the promise of quick release.

Ray’s gleam of madness prevails, if only for a moment, and he smiles weakly.

“There’s that anger, Jones. Always your fucking go to, isn’t it? Slap it on, hope it drowns out everything else. Who are you, under all that stupid bravado?”

“Could ask you the same thing,” Michael snaps back, all too quick to relay the insult. “Too much of the city in you, man. It’s sick.”

He means to spit the words out like he’s chewed them up first, a dinner of nails and barbs, but Ray’s expression sinks his gut. Ray sees through him. Sees through the biting personality he tries to proclaim as hardened, and draws it out for exactly what it is.

“Maybe,” Ray agrees, a shadow passing across his face that Michael has never seen before. “But you sure do seem inclined to stick around though, don’t you? For someone who hates this fucking city so much, it’s the only thing that’s kept you from pulling the trigger, night after night.” He sneers. It’s not a good look for him. “What’s the matter, Jones? Don’t like the reminder of where you belong?”

Michael tries to bite back, but something about Ray’s words are sinking into him, sticking to his bones like honey and slowing his movements until his words are lodged sickly in his throat. The only thing that comes out of him is weak, the flickering desperation of a fire caught in a breeze.

“You went against Geoff’s orders to save me. Almost got yourself killed. Tell me why.”

Ray scoffs, the tell he shows only when something has dug a little too deep under his skin. His gaze flickers, a wisp of surprise that Michael only catches because he’s looking for it, and Ray’s shoulders tense back up. Michael’s heart is pounding in his chest, thrumming against his skin in a panicked warning, but he presses on.

“Rather kill me yourself than let someone else do it, right?” he echos softly, a quiet cataclysm, and doesn’t have time to regret it.

Ray is far quicker than Michael could ever hope to be, his movements fueled by a methodical detachment that propels him to an unholy level of quick decision making. Michael’s back is against the wall and the pocketknife is against his neck before his words can even travel to the far corners of the room. He swallows, and feels it press against the tender flesh of his throat, warm and razor-fine, like an extension of his own rapidly heating skin. Ray’s eyes are sharper than the blade, searching for something Michael doesn’t know how to give.

He huffs out a breath of laughter, because it feels right.

“Do it,” he hisses, fisting his hands into Ray’s shirt to drag him closer, hip to hip, trapping himself in a solid pressure that threatens to envelope him from both sides. The knife jerks, and he can feel the rivulet of blood that trails down his neck, warm enough to combat the fire that’s tearing through his system. “Don’t pussy out on me now, Narvaez. _Do_ it.”

The knife presses _hard,_ and all Michael can think is _this is it--_ and he’s not really surprised. Not after everything. But the sharp stab of pain is gone as quickly as it came, and Ray’s hands are a burning slide as they replace blade with fingers, leaning forward to crush his mouth against Michael’s.

The knife falls softly to the padded floor, all but forgotten as Michael digs his fingers into Ray’s back, pulling him closer. The kiss is heavy, burdened with the rising swell of their shared incredulity, but Michael aches for the contact, to feel Ray pressed against him at all angles. Smothering him, replacing all his own broken parts with the baggage Ray drags alongside him from being extraordinarily too _much._ Too much detachment. Too impersonal. Too close to that sociopath label that wraps Ray up like a Christmas bow for Michael’s emotionally impaired needs.

Ray bites down hard, and Michael groans. It’s not a continuation of the rooftop, where their laughter had been prevalent and the tease was manageable; this is a raw need like he’s never known, coiled up inside of him and springloaded to burst at the slightest dissolution of resistance. Ray’s hands are so much more than physical, leaving a claim on his body that feels like the first tentative breaths of true satisfaction, and every press of his lips has him swelling in disbelief, a light at the end of his proverbial tunnel.

Ray’s thigh is pressing between Michael’s legs, hard enough to be painful, but Michael writhes at the contact. Being stuck in an emotional rut for so long has dulled him, and this onslaught of sensation in the middle of emotional turmoil feels like his nerves are being shredded open from disuse. It hurts in a way he’s craved, a human reaction that flares light into the parts of him that have long gone dark.

The kiss turns aggressive as Michael reacts a little less appropriately than any sane person would to the rough treatment, keening softly. Ray wants the lead, if the hand that pulls demandingly at his hair is any indication, and Michael is happy to give it, relief spreading through his veins at the year long cultivation of denial.

“Turn around,” Ray breathes, and it’s not a suggestion. Michael follows instructions obediently, the pang of embarrassment at his own submission going unnoticed over the throbbing of interest in his jeans. He grips the desk against the wall as Ray runs his hands down Michael’s sides, taking inventory of every little place that Michael jerks and reacts. Putting weight on his shoulder still hurts like a bitch, but Michael knows Ray’s pain has to far exceed his own, and he’s not about to be the one who sacrifices this moment for a little thing like comfort.

Two fingers trail up to his mouth, and Michael doesn’t need the instruction. He opens and lets Ray move between his lips, moaning lightly around the digits as Ray presses heavy, worshipful kisses against the back of his neck. He can still faintly taste the gun-oil that clings to Ray’s presence, so tightly entwined with his pheromones that Michael hasn’t been able to avoid getting hard when he has to gut and clean his rifle. He coats the fingers in his mouth, thinking about how truly fucked in the head he must be to get off to the thought of what those weapons have done in Ray’s hands.

Ray doesn’t rush him, thrusting lightly into Michael’s mouth like he’s not particularly concerned _how_ he fucks him, as long as it’s consistently happening. His free hand slides from where it had been wrapped around Michael’s torso to trail down to his pants, where the top button opens so easily Michael’s half convinced it was rigged to respond to Ray’s touch. Once they’re undone, Ray jerks the denim down just enough for Michael to spread his legs.

Ray huffs a laugh, but Michael can hear the unsteady cadence of his breath. “Thought you’d put up more of a fight.”

Michael bites down hard on his fingers, feeling quiet like a man who dared to wreck a shine, but Ray only hisses in appreciation, hips jerking forward of their own account, and he finally pulls his hand away.

“Easy,” he mumbles, and it’s the most compassion Michael gets before a spit-soaked finger is breaching him, rougher than he expects. The feeling wretches a choked-off gasp from him, and Ray reaches back around him, running his free hand down the clenched muscles of Michael’s stomach. “You can take it, baby. Take it for me.”

Michael _hates_ how quickly that term of endearment manages to lax his tension, but he’ll take a crutch where he can get it. As Ray moves to add a second finger, he distracts himself by pushing his own pants further down, just enough to free his restrained and painful dick. Ray’s fingers give a particularly violent thrust when Michael winds his hand around himself, just hard enough to ebb the discomfort, and he knows Ray’s tells well enough to recognize the silent approval.

Michael’s arms are already beginning to shake from supporting his arched back, and he knows he won’t be able to hold himself like this for long. The pain in his shoulder blisters, and the unhealthy amount of painkillers he’d swallowed an hour ago are rendering him woozy and weak. He knows Ray can’t be faring much better, but if the way he slides fluidly in and out of Michael, content to take his time working him open, he’s far better at pain management than Michael gives him credit for.

Still, though-- “It’s fine,” he says, his words falling from his lips in a jumbled mess rather than the confident string he intended. “Seriously, just go.”

Ray pauses, but doesn’t argue, a personality facet that Michael truly appreciates in him. He feels slick fingers slide out of him, and a hand is pressing between his shoulder blades, urging him to bend forward. He knew Ray would take him at face value, he always does, but when he hears the metallic sound of a zipper slice through the air behind him, followed closely by the hard press of Ray’s cock against him, he can’t help the apprehension that flares inside him.

“No lube?” He jokes weakly, more to distract himself than anything else. “Not a good way to get a second date.”

It should be impossible to guess Ray’s expression, but Michael can _feel_ the grin that spreads across the face behind him. “Don’t need a second date,” Ray responds lightly, his voice ticked an octave lower from arousal. “You’ll be feeling me for days regardless.”

Ray fucks into him in one hard motion. A tremble of _wrong_ passes through Michael’s core, and he tries to breathe through the pain of being impaled. He feels split, too much taken at too hard of a pace, but each new pain Ray submits him to is another hit from that undefinable drug, and he’s hanging on the very precipice of addiction. Ray’s words are curling around him, possessive and definite, and he’s keening at the knowledge of being so wanted, even as it tears him open.

He shifts in discomfort, reveling in the split seconds Ray gifts to him to adjust, but it’s over quickly, the hand on his back pressing hard to ensure Michael stays bent over and presented. Ray moves with a shallow thrust, adjusting to the tight space just as Michael needs to adjust to the intrusion, but it slowly picks up speed alongside the frequency of Ray’s harsh breathing.

Michael knows they’re not portraying the picture of romance -- not with Ray’s hand fisted tightly in his hair as leverage, the other gripping bruises into the flesh of Michael’s hip -- but something stirs inside him regardless. Ray finds his place inside Michael as easily as he’d found his place beside him, and soon the the pain feathers out into pleasure, the distant sparks of bliss coming in larger doses until they threaten to overwhelm him, and Ray jerks at just the right angle to have Michael gasping beneath him.

Ray presses against his back, the searing heat of cotton against cotton nothing but a chemical buffer, a mild inconvenience. Michael prefers it this way, Ray fucking into him on a physical level that finally mirrors the compatibility and psychological song and dance they’ve been perfecting for the past twelve months. A hand curls around his throat, stinging the lingering pain of Ray’s blade.

“Mine,” Ray breathes into his back, the ghost of his exhale trailing across Michael’s neck. He speaks it like the beginnings of a curse, or a blessing. “Mine mine _mine--”_

He punctuates the final declaration with a hard thrust that rips a groan from Michael’s throat that has to work it’s way past Ray’s tight, possessive grip. He spares no consideration for Michael’s comfort, the same ideal that built the very platform for their relationship, and Michael is once again struck by how insane it all is -- how he’d never let another person see him like this, bent over and begging, but with Ray, everything is skewed. He’d let Ray convince him to go on a murder spree at two in the morning. He’d let Ray share the private moments of domesticity without a second thought. He’d let Ray leave bruises on his hips as he fucks into him, half-convinced that the vacillating anger and appreciation Ray saps from him is better than feeling nothing at all.

He’s more than convinced, really. He’s so far gone that the covetous words slipping from Ray’s lips don’t leave him drenched in a cold, uncertain anxiety anymore. And when Ray picks up the pace from greedy discovery to a potent _urgency,_ the thought of Ray’s claim isn’t so alarming when it comes coupled with dexterous fingers sliding across his dick.

“Come for me,” he’s demanding, whispers that Michael can almost twist to being _fond._ “Come for me, baby. Only me. Wanna feel you get tighter for me.”

Michael’s orgasm hits him by surprise, the words wrapping around the arousal in his stomach and squeezing until he can’t keep it in. He half collapses on the desk as Ray works him through it, hands trembling, white-bordered sparks warbling his vision as his release coats the exposed skin on his stomach.

“Fuck--” Ray curses as Michael’s muscles seize, and he’s thrusting wildly, coming undone while his body shakes against Michael’s back. He can’t feel Ray coming inside of him, but the full body reaction is hard to ignore, the furthest thing from _composed_ Michael has ever seen Ray lower himself to. They stay there, cemented into one another like two entities that had been melted and reformed into something new, until Ray’s breathing returns to normal and he pulls out with a surprisingly gentle motion.

Michael feels the loss like a phantom limb, Ray’s heat still coursing through him despite the chill that racks his now exposed body. He shivers, expecting relief as Ray pulls his chaotic presence away, but that ambiguous _something_ is rolling steadily towards him instead, picking away at the satisfaction he was gifted and slowly replacing it with the hollow emptiness that lingers like a insurmountable barricade between him and his ability to enjoy the life he deserves.

But Ray is tugging at him, exhaustion displayed in the way his grip is soft and heavy, and Michael lets himself be pulled back towards the bed. He has just enough energy to stuff himself back into his pants before he collapses across the pristine sheets, his shoulder and ass throbbing in a tandem pain. Ray grimaces as he moves, his chest likely covered in bruises that circle out from open and painful welts, but he wears the injury well, powers through it with the same indifference that he approaches all things in life.

Most things in life, at least.

Michael tries to bite down the heady feeling of _pain_ that runs deeper than his physical wounds as Ray falls next to him, laying on his back to counter Michael’s face-first collapse. It’s a losing battle, one he’s fought so many times before, one not even the satisfaction of death-dodging and a solid lay could fix.

Which is why it’s so unbelievable that, when Ray’s hand comes to rest gently on the small of Michael’s back, a simple affirmation of solidarity, it shoots a radiant spark of _comfort_ that expels the encroaching darkness like a shock wave. He can’t help the jolt of peace that passes through his body, nor the resulting sigh.

“That was some real Batman shit you pulled today,” Michael mumbles, if only to fill the silence that threatens to deafen him in it’s security.

Beside him in the darkness, Ray snorts. “Thought I was Catwoman.”

Michael can feel his eyes closing, overwhelmed with the heavy fuck, the copious amounts of painkillers, and the general exhaustion that blankets him. “Dunno who you are, Ray.” Then, as an afterthought, he adds. “Glad you’re not dead though.”

The hand resting on his back presses lightly, and Ray’s soft, contemplative “Ditto” lulls him to sleep.

When he wakes, the sun is already high, and his body is stiff and sore. Ray sleeps on beside him, a heavy slumber that only Michael ever sees, so different than the half-alert dozes he allows himself in the presence of other crew members. Michael dwells on the vulnerability.

He showers regretfully, ashamed to miss the sweat and stick that made him feel so complete and claimed the night before. Like he’d been _needed_ outside of what he could provide as an asset.

_You’re right. I don’t need anything from you._

Michael smiles. Ray’s never been a very good liar. And the marks that adorn his hips feel like a testamate to all the things Ray will never, ever say, coupled together nicely with the things Michael will never, ever admit.

He orders pizza, intentionally begins to fuck up Ray’s K/D ratio in Call of Duty, and waits for the man to wake. They won’t talk about it, of course, but they’ve never needed to do much of that anyway.

 

///

 

She’s cute, he thinks. _Real_ cute.

It hadn’t taken him much effort to earn an invite back to her place, and if he wasn’t so distracted with _staying_ distracted, it might have buffed his ego a bit. Her apartment isn’t far, she assured him, and their lifted ride over had her in a giggly mess, red cheeks advertising both her inebriation and naivety.

She’s got him pressed against the wall of her apartment, peppering him with affections and adorations that scream of potential long-term red flags, but for the night, he’s willing to overlook it. He’ll be gone before it matters. Her fingers trail across the piece he keeps in his waistband, and she hesitates, skimming the textured surface as though she can’t quite pin down what he’s packing.

And suddenly, she’s moving against him in urgency, the spark of danger she found in whatever occupation she believes him to have filling the role of a potent aphrodisiac. He grins against her mouth as she unbuckles his pants, because he can’t judge her, not really.

The night’s going good. Until it goes to shit.

The more of her skin he sees, the less focused he becomes on it. Everything, even the feeling of her clenching around him, is draped with a thick haze that he can’t fully penetrate. His mind is wandering, and he’s on auto-pilot, the explicit film playing out before him like a dream he’s seen so many times he’s become numb, and the action has become tedious.

Her fingers don’t grip hard enough, he thinks, watching her above him as she takes what she wants. She’s soft in a way he used to love, just another thing in life that had never satisfied him in all the ways it promised to. Her fingers unknowingly run across the fading bruises on his shoulders, his hips, and it’s a snap-flash back to Ray, deft hands positioning him, digging in _hard_ to ensure this exact fucking thing would happen.

The thought hits him with more guilt than he imagined it would.

The longer it takes, the less he feels, suddenly burdened by how heavy the reality is of going backwards in time, to when he brought girls like her back to that materialized apartment. All he knows is what she’s lacking, all he feels is where she _is,_ rather than where she _isn’t,_ and how utterly disappointing that perfect, soft skin is. There’s no ferocity in the air between them, driving her to tear him apart; there’s no chemistry, no artful arrangement of demons that coexist in a balanced tide of violence. She smells like honey, like perfume, and he aches for gunmetal.

Even her petulant cry of confusion sounds half a world away as he pushes her off and shrugs on his pants. If she speaks to him, he doesn’t hear it over the sound of his own blood pulsing in his ears, sending a heady, unnerving realization through every cell in his body. It’s too much to acknowledge. He needs to be _anywhere_ else.

He doesn’t remember the walk back, the hailed cab, nor the elevator ride to the penthouse. All he knows is the wave of relief that washes over him at the thick, slightly humid smell of smoke that drifts lazily from the couch once he’s shut the penthouse door behind him. Ray glances up at him, eyes half-lidded as he smiles a grin that looks criminal in the moonlight.

“So how was the brunette?”

Michael knows he must look half catatonic as he moves, but Ray doesn’t seem to mind -- he looks as if he expected it, really, with the way his eyes trace lazily over Michael’s disheveled state, a wreckage that he himself proudly brought to ruin. His words are coy, teasing, but there’s greed in the flash of his eyes, and Michael’s willing to do anything to see that admittance of weakness, the only thing that can ensure him that Ray is as fucked as he is.

He’s not disappointed when Ray spreads his legs during Michael’s approach, as cordial of an invitation Michael’s ever likely to get, and he climbs into the offer like he was coming home.

He pours his words into the kiss. The slide of his tongue a longing admittance of desire, the nip of Ray’s bottom lip a fiery declaration of Michael’s annoyance, his awareness of Ray’s clandestine intentions. Even the soft kisses he offers after those harsh bites scream of his pathetic need for Ray’s… anything. For his everything.

Ray rolls his hips up, and Michael is breathless, sounds being torn from him that no partner had ever elicited. He knows he’s ruined, knows he’s programmed to respond to Ray’s whims with the same knee-jerk reaction a dog in a shock collar learns his boundaries. And when Ray smirks at him, black hair a haphazard mess that falls into bright eyes, Michael _knows_ he knows.

He bears down, finding that perfect friction against Ray’s answering hardness, and hisses, “You don’t own me.”

Ray shudders, whether from Michael defiance, or from the admission of fear, he’ll never know. But Ray pulls him back by the collar of his shirt, one hand trailing down to Michael’s ass, encouraging the slow, agonizing grind.

“I own this whole fucking city,” Ray croons against the skin of his cheek, bastardizing his voice with both an air of cocky arrogance, and an octave too deep for Michael to resist. His hips jerk at the sound, and he can feel Ray’s grin against him like a brand. “And you, baby. You’ve got too much of the city in you. So why don’t you tell me where you think you belong?”

Ray’s hands hurt in all the right ways, like removing shrapnel from a wound that had tried to heal itself around the foreign entity, encasing the pain. Tearing him apart to build him back up. The brunette is forgotten as Ray strips him bare, and Michael rides him slowly and mercilessly, drawing out that cherished, sacred moment where he finally feels alive.

He wraps his hands around Ray’s throat, and the sniper lets him, swallowing around the press of Michael’s fingers like he's navigating a minefield. Ray’s hands dig into skin, breaking through until his nails are tinged red underneath with blood, and Michael urges him on, secretly delighting in the marks that’ll be there in the morning.

When Michael comes, he chokes on Ray’s name and squeezes his fingers tighter, watching in warbled satisfaction as Ray jerks into him with a few final thrusts, just as desperate for air as he is for release. Knowing Michael won’t kill him, not really, but he won’t fight either outcome.

 

///

 

Gavin is watching him curiously, fingers dancing along the rim of his beer in a skip-tap pattern that’s too methodical to be accidental. The lights in the bar are dimmed, casting everything in a self-deprecating glow, but Michael can’t tear the smile from his face, no longer affected by the world outside his mind in the way he was used to.

There’s a sting when he moves his head, the abuse Ray littered across his neck a caution tape mockery of his personal relationship put on blaring display. Half the bruising is borne from pain, half from pleasure, and if he tries hard enough, he can still feel the ghost of Ray’s teeth against the pressure point on his throat.

Not much compared to the state of Ray’s back, nor the deep cut on his lip. Michael smirks to himself at the memory, imagining what Ray must look like out on his payload run tonight, running his tongue over the split and thinking idly of what’s waiting for him when he comes home. He’s vaguely aware of Gavin’s staring, a pinprick of interest in the throes of Michael’s imagination.

“I thought you said he was a dick to you,” Gavin deadpans, never one to wax poetic as he breaks apart Michael’s concentration. “That you didn’t trust him.”

Michael shrugs. “Don’t really have anything to hide. No reason for trust, if that’s the case.”

Gavin’s finger moves a little too quickly on the rim. Michael notices it, logs away Gavin’s concern somewhere in his addled brain, and promptly forgets about it. A newly developed trait.

“When did you stop fretting about him killing you in your sleep, then?”

Michael tries to look indifferent, and for the most part, it succeeds. His voice sounds a little hollow over the the classic rock pouring from the speakers, but he can’t find a desire to manifest any potency to his words.

“Wasn’t it you that told me to give him a chance in the first place?”

Gavin’s short, controlled laugh starts before Michael can even finish his sentence, and it’s a little too wild around the edges, as though Gavin’s struggling to maintain a grip on a conversation he doesn’t want to be having in the first place.

“I meant as part of the team, you know,” he explains quickly, like he’s been internally combusting to say it. “Colleagues, friends, bloody… _whatever_. I didn’t mean…” His eyes flick to Michael’s hand, where blood is still staining the wrap he’d wound around his fingers. “Look, I’m not saying that I’m not happy you two worked things out. It’s been brilliant for the crew, really. But whatever is happening here clearly isn’t healthy. It’s not--”

Michael cuts Gavin off with a derisive snort into his beer, feeling the swell of disbelief rise in his gut.

“You know my day job, and you want to lecture me about my fucking health? This is the most grounded I’ve felt in years, and _now_ you’re concerned?”

Gavin’s eyes go cold. It’s an unusual look for him, rare and frightening in the way a high capacity rifle might be to a man with a spear. He pauses for a moment, considering, before beginning to say what Michael knows he’s been leading up to.

“When I first came on, do you know what Geoff told me about Ray?”

Michael’s eyes trail up to him, taking another slosh of beer to hide the sudden spike of interest that sizzles in his veins. Once Michael’s attention is focused, Gavin continues, his voice earnest in all the ways Gavin decidedly _never_ is.

“He never takes a cut from the profits, did you know that? Just makes sure the armory stays restocked, snags a few bundles to keep himself fed and clothed. But outside of that? Nothing. He’s never asked for a goddamn _thing_ , Michael.” Gavin swallows heavily, as though he’s revealing a closely-guarded secret, and the guilt of it is eating him alive. “Geoff respects him, but… not in the right way. Said that they let Ray do whatever the fuck he wants, and they just hope that it’s enough to keep him around. That giving him that freedom would keep us safe from him, I dunno, losing interest or some shite.”

Michael hears the next words coming before they pass from Gavin’s lips, and he averts his eyes in enough time to avoid the connection Gavin is determined to make.

“Tell me that’s not what’s happening here, Michael. Just… tell me you’re in control of this.”

Michael swallows thickly, and drains his beer, signaling the bartender for two more bottles. Gavin gives him his silence, the atmosphere between them thin and fragile, waiting on the precipice of Michael’s response before deciding whether it would engulf them. Finally, Michael sighs, running a hand through his hair and falling back on blunt honesty in lue of an actual answer.

“Gavvers, I’m fucking tired of being in control. Seriously. At this point, it’s just...come what may, man.”

It’s a piss-poor response and they both know it, but something about it softens the steel in Gavin’s eyes, and he relaxes a minuscule amount. Just enough to nod his head in thanks as the bartender caps open two more bottles and leaves them to their business. There’s a moment of companionable silence before Gavin sighs, a slowly dawning comprehension winning out over the languid concern still etched across his face.

“Wonky in the head, the both of you,” he mutters, but it’s fond, even laced around the deep unsettlement that still lingers at the revelation.

“Ah,” Michael waves him off, smiling around the rim of his own beer. “Who are you to judge, right?”

 

///

 

Michael sees things differently. It’s a festering, offhand idiosyncrasy that worms its way through his daily delirium, faintly suggesting the idea that, just maybe, he’s trekked too far off the reservation. But it never creates enough of a hindrance to warrant change. It’s a simple comparison process that leaves no room for sympathies, hope, or that omnipresent “see the best in people” judgement that plagues the population outside his doorstep. He likes to convince himself it’s a survival strategy.

Some would say his relationship with Ray is toxic, damaging. Michael would say it’s invigorating. And maybe, just maybe, his perception is skewed, because there aren’t too many people in the world who would soak up the fist of another human being with whispered words of praise on their lips.

And he’s no fool. He knows Ray loves him because Michael represents the humanity Ray would never subject himself to suffering through. Michael is damaged, and Ray gets a thrill out of slotting those pieces back together, breathing his name into the cracks like a makeshift seal of desperation and possession, slowly drawing Michael away from the brink with breadcrumb teases of _belonging_ while tactically destroying him for anyone else. Utterly ruining him for the world outside of Ray’s scope.

And Michael. Michael needs that late night carnage to soothe some aching, gutted feeling he can’t satisfy by any traditional methods. He needs to feel like this life was made for him, and not the other way around, and that two AM massacres are something to be cherished rather than shamed. He needs Ray’s dissociation and devilish encouragement to navigate the waters of his own inner turmoil. He needs Ray’s _acceptance_ in a way that no one else can provide.

They’ll destroy each other, eventually, but they’ll bring Los Santos down to its knees alongside them. After all, this city has so much to offer.

You just have to take what you want, and burn the rest.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thumbs up if you caught the reference to my favorite TV show. 
> 
> Also, a part that never made it into the final cut:
> 
> "Bullshit, I'm a lucky shot. You're... talented."  
> "Careful, Jones. That sounds like a compliment."


End file.
